w    H 


grsm 


^fl^ntTK  ,r\ns»v~"ti 


I 


\"> 


<h 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


BY 

C.    H.     HERFORD 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  the 
University  of  Manchester 


V  OF  THE 

UNIYERSH 

OF 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  &  COMPANY 

1905 


■'*-iifijLI 


Copyright,  igoj 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 


Published,  March,  igoj 


or  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

TO    THE        V^CAUFoafiifc* 

REV.    F.    E.    MILLSON 

DEAR  OLD  FRIEND, 

A  generation  has  passed  since  the 
day  when,  in  your  study  at  Brackenbed  Grange,  your 
reading  of  "  Ben  Ezra,"  the  tones  of  which  still  vibrate 
in  my  memory,  first  introduced  me  to  the  poetry  of  Robert 
Browning.  He  was  then  just  entering  upon  his  wider 
fame.  You  had  for  years  been  one  not  merely  of  the 
few  who  recognised  him,  but  of  those,  yet  fewer,  who 
proclaimed  him.  The  standpoint  of  the  following  pages 
is  not,  I  think,  very  remote  from  your  own  ;  conversa- 
tions with  you  have,  in  any  case,  done  something  to  define 
it.  You  see,  then,  that  your  share  of  responsibility  for 
them  is,  on  all  counts,  considerable,  and  you  must  not 
refuse  to  allow  me  to  associate  them  with  a  name  which 
the  old  Rabbi's  great  heartening  cry :  "  Strive,  and  hold 
cheap  the  strain,  Learn,  nor  account  the  pang,  Dare, 
never  grudge  the  throe,"  summons  spontaneously  to  many 
other  lips  than  mine.  To  some  it  is  brought  yet  closer 
by  his  calm  retrospect  through  sorrow. 


>24 


PREFACE 

Browning  is  confessedly  a  difficult  poet,  and  his 
difficulty  is  by  no  means  all  of  the  kind  which  op- 
poses unmistakable  impediments  to  the  reader's  path. 
Some  of  it  is  of  the  more  insidious  kind,  which  may 
coexist  with  a  delightful  persuasion  that  the  way  is 
absolutely  clear,  and  Browning's  "  obscurity  "  an  in- 
vention of  the  invertebrate.  The  problems  presented 
by  his  writing  are  merely  tough,  and  will  always  yield 
to  intelligent  and  patient  scrutiny.  But  the  problems 
presented  by  his  mind  are  elusive,  and  it  would  be  hard 
to  resist  the  cogency  of  his  interpreters,  if  it  were  not 
for  their  number.  The  rapid  succession  of  acute  and 
notable  studies  of  Browning  put  forth  during  the  last 
three  or  four  years  makes  it  even  more  apparent  than 
it  was  before  that  the  last  word  on  Browning  has  not 
yet  been  said,  even  in  that  very  qualified  sense  in 
which  the  last  word  about  any  poet,  or  any  poetry, 
can  ever  be  said  at  all.  The  present  volume,  in  any 
case,  does  not  aspire  to  say  it.  But  it  is  not  perhaps 
necessary  to  apologise  for  adding,  under  these  con- 
ditions, another  to  the  list.  From  most  of  the  recent 
studies  I  have  learned  something ;  but  this  book  has 


Vlll  PREFACE 

its  roots  in  a  somewhat  earlier  time,  and  may  perhaps 
be  described  as  an  attempt  to  work  out,  in  the  detail 
of  Browning's  life  and  poetry,  from  a  more  definitely 
literary  standpoint  and  without  Hegelian  preposses- 
sions, a  view  of  his  genius  not  unlike  that  set  forth 
with  so  much  eloquence  and  penetration,  in  his  well- 
known  volume,  by  Professor  Henry  Jones.  The  nar- 
rative of  Browning's  life,  in  the  earlier  chapters, 
makes  no  pretence  to  biographical  completeness.  An 
immense  mass  of  detail  and  anecdote  bearing  upon 
him  is  now  available  and  within  easy  reach.  I  have 
attempted  to  sift  out  from  this  picturesque  loose  drift 
the  really  salient  and  relevant  material.  Much  do- 
mestic incident,  over  which  the  brush  would  fain 
linger,  will  be  missed  ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  great 
central  epoch  of  Browning's  poetic  life,  from  1846 
to  1869,  has  been  treated,  deliberately,  on  what  may 
appear  an  inordinately  generous  scale.  Some  amount 
of  overlapping  and  repetition,  it  may  be  added,  in  the 
analytical  chapters  the  plan  of  the  book  rendered  it 
impossible  wholly  to  avoid. 

I  am  indebted  to  a  friend,  who  wishes  to  be  name- 
less, for  reading  the  proofs,  with  results  extremely 
beneficial  to  the  book. 

University  of  Manchester, 
January \  igofr 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE 


I. 

II. 

III. 


IV. 


PART      I 

BROWNING'S  LIFE  AND  WORK 

EARLY  LIFE.     PARACELSUS     j  » 

ENLARGING   HORIZONS.     SORDELLO 

MATURING  METHODS.     DRAMAS  AND  DRA- 
MATIC LYRICS 

Introduction. 

I.     Dramas.     From  Strafford  to  Pippa  Passes 

II.     From  the  Blot  in  the  *  Scutcheon  to  Luria 

III.    The  early  Dramatic  Lyrics  and  Romances 

IN     ITALY.     MEN    AND 


WEDDED     LIFE 
WOMEN 

January  1845  t0  September  1846 
Society  and  Friendships    . 
Politics      .... 
Poems  of  Nature  . 
Poems  of  Art 
Poems  of  Religion 
Poems  of  Love     . 
V.     LONDON.     DRAMATIS  PERSONAL 
VI.     THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK. 
VII.    AFTERMATH 
VIII.    THE  LAST  DECADE 


I. 
II. 
III. 

IV. 

v. 

VI. 
VII. 


3 
25 

38 

*l 
65 


74 

74 

83 

87 

90 

96 

109 

I31 

147 

168 

186 

218 


CONTENTS 
PART       II 

BROWNINGS  MIND  AND  ART 

IX.    THE  POET 235 

I.  Divergent  psychical  tendencies  of  Browning — 

"  romantic  "  temperament,  "  realist  "  senses — 
blending  of  their  donnies  in  his  imaginative 
activity — shifting  complexion  of  "  finite  "  and 
"  infinite "         .  .  .  .  235 

II.  His  "  realism."     Plasticity,  acuteness,  and  verac- 

ity of  intellect  and  senses        .  .  .     237 

III.  But  his  realism  qualified  by  energetic  individual 

preference  along  certain  well-defined  lines      .     243 

IV.  Joy  in  Light  and  Colour  .  .  .     244. 
V.     Joy  in  Form.     Love  of  abruptness,  of  intricacy; 

clefts  and  spikes  ....     247 

VI.  Joy  in  Power.  Violence  in  imagery  and  descrip- 
tion; in  sounds;  in  words.  Grotesqueness. 
Intensity.  Catastrophic  action.  The  preg- 
nant moment.  .....     254 

VII.  Joy  in  Soul.  1.  Limited  in  Browning  on  the 
side  of  simple  human  nature ;  of  the  family ; 
of  the  civic  community ;  of  myth  and  symbol.     264 

VIII.  Joy  in  Soul.  2.  Supported  by  Joy  in  Light  and 
Colour ;  in  Form  ;  in  Power.  3.  Extended  to 
(a)  sub-human  Nature,  (6)  the  inanimate 
products  of  Art ;  Relation  of  Browning's  poe- 
try to  his  interpretation  of  life  .  .     269 

X.    THE  INTERPRETER  OF  LIFE  .  .283 

I.  Approximation  of  God,  Man,  Nature  in  the 
thought  of  the  early  nineteenth  century ;  how 
far  reflected  in  the  thought  of  Browning  .     283 

II.  Antagonistic  elements  of  Browning's  intellect; 

resulting  fluctuations  of  his  thought.  Two 
conceptions  of  Reality.  Ambiguous  treat- 
ment of  "  Matter  "  ;  of  Time  .  .     286 

III.  Conflicting  tendencies  in  his  conception  of  God,     290 


CONTENTS  XI 

rv.  Conflicting  tendencies  in  his  treatment  of  Knowl- 
edge    .  .  .  .  .  .293 

v.     Proximate  solution  of  these  antagonisms  in  the 

conception  of  Love     ....     295 

VI.  Final  estimate  of  Browning's  relation  to  the  pro- 
gressive and  conservative  movements  of  his 
age  ......     296 

INDEX 305 


PART    I 
BROWNING'S  LIFE  AND  WORK 


ei  8r)  0e7ov  6  vou$  tt/><5?  tov  av0pa>novf  Kai  6  Rata  toutov  (3{<ts 
6eTos  izpdsrbv  avOpwiztvov  fiiov. — ARIST.,  Eth.  N.  x.  8. 

**  Ne  creator  ne  creatura  mai," 
Cominci6  ei,  "  figliuol,  fu  senza  amore." 

— Dante,  Purg.  xvii.  91. 


%1  R  A  *  . 

V 'or  THE 


BROWNING 


CHAPTER  I 

EARLY    LIFE.       PARACELSUS 

The  Boy  sprang  up  .  .  .  and  ran, 

Stung  by  the  splendour  of  a  sudden  thought. 

— A  Death  in  the  Desert. 

Dass  \fih  erkenne,  was  die  Welt 
Im  Innersten  zusammenhalt. 

— Faust. 

Judged  by  his  cosmopolitan  sympathies  and  his  en- 
cyclopaedic knowledge,  by  the  scenery  and  the  per- 
sons among  whom  his  poetry  habitually  moves,  Brown- 
ing was  one  of  the  least  insular  of  English  poets.  But 
he  was  also,  of  them  all,  one  of  the  most  obviously  and 
unmistakably  English.  Tennyson,  the  poetic  mouth- 
piece of  a  rather  specific  and  exclusive  Anglo-Saxon- 
dom,  belonged  by  his  Vergilian  instincts  of  style  to 
that  main  current  of  European  poetry  which  finds  re- 
sponse and  recognition  among  cultivated  persons  of  all 
nationalities ;  and  he  enjoyed  a  European  distinction 
not  attained  by  any  other  English  poet  since  Byron. 
Browning,  on  the  contrary,  with  his  long  and  brilliant 
gallery  of  European  creations,  Browning,  who  claimed 
Italy  as  his  "  university,"  remains,  as  a  poet,  all  but 
unknown  even  in  Italy,  and  all  but  non-existent  for 

3 


4  BROWNING 

the  rest  of  the  civilised  world  beyond  the  Channel. 
His  cosmopolitan  sympathies  worked  through  the 
medium  of  a  singularly  individual  intellect;  and  the 
detaching  and  isolating  effect  which  pronounced  in- 
dividuality of  thinking  usually  produces,  even  in  a 
genial  temperament,  was  heightened  in  his  case  by  a 
robust  indifference  to  conventions  of  all  kinds,  and 
not  least  to  those  which  make  genius  easily  intelligi- 
ble to  the  plain  man. 

What  is  known  of  Browning's  descent  makes  these 
contrasts  in  some  degree  intelligible.  An  old  strain 
of  Wessex  squires  or  yeomen,  dimly  discernible  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  issued,  about  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth,  in  the  first  distinct  person- 
ality among  the  poet's  forebears,  his  grandfather,  who 
also  bore  the  name  Robert.  He  was  a  robust,  hard- 
headed,  energetic,  pushing  man  of  business  and  the 
world,  who  made  his  way  from  a  clerkship  to  an  im- 
portant and  responsible  post  in  the  Bank  of  England, 
and  settled  accounts  with  religion  and  with  literature 
in  a  right  English  way,  by  reading  the  Bible  and  "  Tom 
Jones  "  through  every  year,  and  very  little  else.  More 
problematical  and  elusive  is  the  figure  of  his  first  wife, 
Margaret  Tittle,  with  whom,  to  judge  from  the  char- 
acter of  her  eldest  son,  literary  and  artistic  sensibility 
first  mingled  in  the  hard  practical  Browning  stock. 
In  this  second  Robert  Browning,  indeed,  the  some- 
what brutal  and  grasping  egotism  of  the  father  gave 
place  to  a  cultured  humanity  of  almost  feminine  ten- 
derness and  charm.  All  his  life  long  he  was  passion- 
ately devoted  to  literature,  to  art,  to  children.     He 


EARLY    LIFE  5 

collected  rare  books  and  prints  with  avidity,  but  was 
no  less  generous  in  giving  them  away.  Indifferent  to 
money,  he  hated  to  see  a  scrap  of  paper  wasted.  He 
had  a  neat  touch  in  epigrams,  and  a  boyish  delight  in 
grotesque  rhymes.  But  there  was  no  lack  of  grit  in 
this  accomplished,  fresh-minded,  and  lovable  man. 
He  had  the  tough  fibre  of  his  race ;  only  it  was  the 
wrongs  of  others  that  called  out  its  tenacity,  not  his 
own.  While  holding  an  appointment  on  his  mother's 
West  Indian  estate,  he  braved  the  fierce  resentment 
of  the  whole  colony  by  teaching  a  negro-boy  to  read  ; 
and  finally  incurred  «disinheritance  rather  than  draw  a 
livelihood  from  slave-labour.  This  Shelleyan  act  in- 
volved for  him  the  resignation  of  his  intellectual  and 
artistic  ambitions  ;  and  with  the  docility  characteristic 
of  him,  where  only  his  own  interests  were  concerned, 
he  forthwith  entered  the  fairly  well-paid  but  unexcit- 
ing service  of  the  Bank. 

In  181 1  he  married,  and  on  May  7  of  the  follow- 
ing year  his  eldest  son,  Robert,  was  born.  His  wife 
was  the  daughter  of  a  German  shipowner,  William 
Wiedemann,  who  had  settled  and  married  at  Dundee. 
Wiedemann  is  said  to  have  been  an  accomplished 
draughtsman  and  musician,  and  his  daughter,  without 
herself  sharing  these  gifts,  probably  passed  them  on  to 
her  son.  Whether  she  also  communicated  from  her 
Scottish  and  German  ancestry  the  "  metaphysical  " 
proclivities  currently  ascribed  to  him,  is  a  hypothesis 
absolutely  in  the  air.1     What  is  clear  is  that  she  was 

1  A  similar  but  more  groundless  suggestion,  that  the  author  of 
Holy-cross  Day  and  Rabbi  ben  Ezra  probably  had  Jewish  blood  in 


0  BROWNING 

herself  intellectually  simple  and  of  few  ideas,  but  rich 
in  the  temperament,  at  once  nervous  and  spiritual, 
which  when  present  in  the  mother  so  often  becomes 
genius  in  the  son.  "  She  was  a  divine  woman,"  such 
was  her  son's  brief  sufficing  tribute.  Physically  he 
seems  to  have  closely  resembled  her,1  and  they  were 
bound  together  by  a  peculiarly  passionate  love  from 
first  to  last. 

The  home  in  Camberwell  into  which  the  boy 
Robert  was  born  reflected  the  serene,  harmonious, 
self-contented  character  of  his  parents.  Friends  rarely 
disturbed  the  even  tenor  of  its  ways,  and  the  storms  of 
politics  seem  to  have  intruded  as  faintly  into  this  su- 
burban seclusion  as  the  roar  of  London.  Books,  busi- 
ness, and  religion  provided  a  framework  of  decorous 
routine  within  which  these  kindly  and  beautiful  souls 
moved  with  entire  content.  Well-to-do  Camberwell 
perhaps  contained  few  homes  so  pure  and  refined; 
but  it  must  have  held  many  in  which  the  life-blood  of 
political  and  social  interests  throbbed  more  vigorously, 
and  where  thought  and  conversation  were  in  closer 

his  veins,  can  only  be  described  as  an  impertinence — not  to  Brown- 
ing but  to  the  Jewish  race.  As  if  to  feel  the  spiritual  genius  of 
Hebraism  and  to  be  moved  by  the  pathos  of  Hebraic  fate  were  an 
eccentricity  only  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  bias  of  kin !  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  his  demonstrable  share  of  German  blood  left  him  rather 
conspicuously  impervious  to  the  literary — and  more  especially  to 
the  "  metaphysical  " — products  of  the  German  mind. 

1  Browning  himself  reports  the  exclamation  of  the  family  doctor 
when  trying  to  diagnose  an  attack  of  his  :  "  Why,  has  anybody  to 
search  far  for  a  cause  of  whatever  nervous  disorder  you  may  suffer 
from,  when  there  sits  your  mother — whom  you  so  absolutely  re- 
semble ! "  {Letters  to  E.  B.  B.t  ii.  456). 


EARLY    LIFE  7 

touch  with  the  intellectual  life  of  the  capital  and  the 
larger  movements  of  the  time.  Nothing  in  Brown- 
ing's boyhood  tended  to  open  his  imagination  to  the 
sense  of  citizenship  and  nationality  which  the  imperial 
pageants  and  ceremonies  of  Frankfurt  so  early  kindled 
in  the,  child  Goethe.  But  within  the  limits  imposed 
by  this  quiet  home  young  Robert  soon  began  to  dis- 
play a  vigour  and  enterprise  which  tried  all  its  re- 
sources. "  He  clamoured  for  occupation  from  the 
moment  he  could  speak,"  and  "  something  to  do  " 
meant  above  all  some  living  thing  to  be  caught  for 
him  to  play  with.  The  gift  of  an  animal  was  found 
a  valuable  aid  to  negotiations  with  the  young  despot ; 
when  medicine  was  to  be  taken,  he  would  name  "  a 
speckled  frog  "  as  the  price  of  his  compliance,  and 
presently  his  mother  would  be  seen  hovering  hither 
and  thither  among  the  strawberry-beds.  A  quaint 
menagerie  was  gradually  assembled  :  owls  and  mon- 
keys, magpies  and  hedgehogs,  an  eagle  and  snakes. 
Boy-collectors  are  often  cruel ;  but  Robert  showed 
from  the  first  an  anxious  tenderness  and  an  eager  care 
for  life  :  we  hear  of  a  hurt  cat  brought  home  to  be 
nursed,  of  lady-birds  picked  up  in  the  depths  of  winter 
and  preserved  with  wondering  delight  at  their  survival. 
Even  in  stories  the  death  of  animals  moved  him  to 
bitter  tears.  He  was  equally  quick  at  books,  and 
soon  outdistanced  his  companions  at  the  elementary 
schools  which  he  attended  up  to  his  fourteenth  year. 
Near  at  hand,  too,  was  the  Dulwich  Gallery, — "  a 
green  half-hour's  walk  across  the  fields," — a  beloved 
haunt  of  his  childhood,  to  which  he  never  ceased  to 


8  BROWNING 

be  grateful. 1  But  his  father's  overflowing  library  and 
portfolios  played  the  chief  part  in  his  early  develop- 
ment. He  read  voraciously,  and  apparently  without 
restraint  or  control.  The  letters  of  Junius  and  of 
Horace  Walpole  were  familiar  to  him  "  in  boyhood ," 
we  are  assured  with  provoking  indefiniteness  by  Mrs. 
Orr ;  as  well  as  u  all  the  works  of  Voltaire. "  Most 
to  his  mind,  however,  was  the  rich  sinewy  English 
and  athletic  fancy  of  the  seventeenth  century  Fan- 
tastic Quarles  ;  a  preference  which  foreshadowed  his 
later  delight  in  the  great  master  of  the  Fantastic 
school,  and  of  all  who  care  for  close-knit  intellect  in 
poetry,  John  Donne. 

Curiously  enough,  it  was  some  fragments  of  the 
grandiose  but  shadowy  Ossian  which  first  stirred  the 
imitative  impulse  in  this  poet  of  trenchant  and  clear- 
cut  form.  u  The  first  composition  I  ever  was  guilty 
of,"  he  wrote  to  Elizabeth  Barrett  (Aug.  25,  1846), 
u  was  something  in  imitation  of  Ossian,  whom  I  had 
not  read,  but  conceived  through  two  or  three  scraps 
in  other  books."  And  long  afterwards  Ossian  was 
"  the  first  book  I  ever  bought  in  my  life  "  (ib.).  These 
"  imitations  "  were  apparently  in  verse,  and  in  rhyme ; 
and  Browning's  bent  and  faculty  for  both  was  very 
early  pronounced.  "  I  never  can  recollect  not  writ- 
ing rhymes  ;  .  .  .  but  I  knew  they  were  nonsense 
even  then."  And  a  well-known  anecdote  of  his  in- 
fancy describes  his  exhibition  of  a  lively  sense  of 
metre  in  verses  which  he  recited  with  emphatic  ac- 
companiments upon  the  edge  of  the  dining-room  table 
1  To  E.  B.  B.,  March  3,  1846. 


EARLY    LIFE  9 

before  he  was  tall  enough  to  look  over  it.  The  crowd- 
ing thoughts  of  his  maturity  had  not  yet  supervened  to 
prevent  the  abundant  music  that  he  "  had  in  him  " 
from  u  getting  out."  It  is  not  surprising  that  a  boy  of 
these  proclivities  was  captivated  by  the  stormy  swing 
and  sweep  of  Byron  j  nor  that  he  should  have  caught 
also  something  of  his  u  splendour  of  language,"  and 
even,  a  little  later,  a  reflection,  respectable  and  suburban 
enough,  of  his  rebellious  Titanism.  The  less  so,  that 
in  Robert's  eleventh  or  twelfth  year  Byron,  the  head 
of  the  Satanic  school,  had  become  the  heroic  cham- 
pion of  Greek  liberation,  and  was  probably  spoken  of 
with  honour  in  the  home  of  the  large-hearted  banker 
who  had  in  his  day  suffered  so  much  for  the  sake  of 
the  unemancipated  slave.  In  later  years  Browning 
was  accustomed  to  deliver  himself  of  breezy  sarcasms 
at  the  expense  of  the  u  flat-fish  "  who  declaimed  so 
eloquently  about  the  "  deep  and  dark  blue  ocean." 
But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  this  genial  chafF  covered  a 
real  admiration, — the  tribute  of  one  abounding  nature 
to  another,  which  even  years  and  the  philosophic  mind 
did  not  seriously  abate.  "  I  always  retained  my  first 
feeling  for  Byron  in  many  respects,"  he  wrote  in  a 
significant  letter  to  Miss  Barrett  in  1846.  "...  I 
would  at  any  time  have  gone  to  Finchley  to  see  a  curl 
of  his  hair  or  one  of  his  gloves,  I  am  sure — while 
Heaven  knows  that  I  could  not  get  up  enthusiasm 
enough  to  cross  the  room  if  at  the  other  end  of  it  all 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey  were  condensed 
into  the  little  china  bottle  yonder."1  It  was  thus  no 
»  To  E.  B.  £.,  Aug.  22,  1846. 


10  BROWNING 

mere  freak  of  juvenile  taste  that  took  shape  in  these 
early  Byronic  poems.  He  entitled  them,  with  the 
lofty  modesty  of  boyish  authorship,  Incondita,  and  his 
parents  sought  to  publish  them.  No  publisher  could 
be  found  ;  but  they  won  the  attention  of  a  notable 
critic,  W.  J.  Fox,  who  feared  too  much  splendour  and 
too  little  thought  in  the  young  poet,  but  kept  his  eye 
on  him  nevertheless. 

Two  years  later  the  boy  of  fourteen  caught  the 
accents  of  another  poetic  voice,  destined  to  touch  the 
sources  of  music  and  passion  in  him  with  far  more 
intimate  power.  His  casual  discovery,  on  a  book-stall, 
of  "  Mr.  Shelley's  Atheistical  poem  "  seems  to  have 
for  the  first  time  made  known  to  him  even  the  name 
of  the  poet  who  had  died  in  Italy  four  years  before. 
Something  of  Shelley's  story  seems  to  have  been 
known  to  his  parents.  It  gives  us  a  measure  of  the 
indulgent  sympathy  and  religious  tolerance  which  pre- 
vailed in  this  Evangelical  home,  that  the  parents 
should  have  unhesitatingly  supplied  the  boy  of  four- 
teen, at  some  cost  of  time  and  trouble,  with  all  the 
accessible  writings  of  the  "  atheistical  "  poet,  and  with 
those  of  his  presumably  like-minded  friend  Keats  as 
well.  He  fell  instantly  under  the  spell  of  both. 
Whatever  he  may  have  known  before  of  ancient  or 
modern  literature,  the  full  splendour  of  romantic 
poetry  here  broke  upon  him  for  the  first  time.  Im- 
mature as  he  was,  he  already  responded  instinctively 
to  the  call  of  the  spirits  most  intimately  akin  to  his 
own.  Byron's  stormy  power  thrilled  and  delighted 
him  j  but  it  was  too  poor  in  spiritual  elements,  too 


EARLY    LIFE  II 

negative,  self-centred,  and  destructive  to  stir  the  deeper 
sources  of  Browning's  poetry.  In  Keats  and  in  Shel- 
ley he  found  poetic  energies  not  less  glowing  and  in- 
tense, bent  upon  making  palpable  to  eye  and  ear  visions 
of  beauty  which,  with  less  of  superficial  realism,  were 
fed  by  far  more  exquisite  and  penetrating  senses,  and 
attached  by  more  and  subtler  filaments  to  the  truth  of 
things.  Beyond  question  this  was  the  decisive  literary 
experience  of  Browning's  early  years.  Probably  it 
had  a  chief  part  in  making  the  poet's  career  his  fixed 
ideal,  and  ultimately,  with  his  father's  willing  consent, 
his  definite  choice.  What  we  know  of  his  inner  and 
outer  life  during  the  important  years  which  turned  the 
boy  into  the  man  is  slight  and  baffling  enough.  The 
fiery  spirit  of  poetry  can  rarely  have  worked  out  its 
way  with  so  little  disturbance  to  the  frame.  Minute 
scrutiny  has  disclosed  traits  of  unrest  and  revolt ;  he 
professed  "  atheism  "  and  practised  vegetarianism,  be- 
trayed at  times  the  aggressive  arrogance  of  an  able 
youth,  and  gave  his  devoted  and  tender  parents  mo- 
ments of  very  superfluous  concern.  For  with  all  his 
immensely  vivacious  play  of  brain,  there  was  some- 
thing in  his  mental  and  moral  nature  from  first  to  last 
stubbornly  inelastic  and  unimpressible,  that  made  him 
equally  secure  against  expansion  and  collapse.  The 
same  simple  tenacity  of  nature  which  kept  his  buoy- 
antly adventurous  intellect  permanently  within  the 
tether  of  a  few  primary  convictions,  kept  him,  in  the 
region  of  practice  and  morality,  within  the  bounds  of 
a  rather  nice  and  fastidious  decorum.  Malign  influ- 
ences effected  no  lodgment  in  a  nature  so  fundamen- 


12  BROWNING 

tally  sound  ;  they  might  cloud  and  trouble  imagination 
for  a  while,  but  their  scope  hardly  extended  further, 
and  as  they  were  literary  in  origin,  so  they  were  mainly 
literary  in  expression.  In  the  meantime  he  was  laying, 
in  an  unsystematic  but  not  ineffective  way,  the  foun- 
dations of  his  many-sided  culture  and  accomplish- 
ment. We  hear  much  of  private  tutors,  of  instruction 
in  French,  in  music,  in  riding,  fencing,  boxing,  dan- 
cing ;  of  casual  attendance  also  at  the  Greek  classes 
in  University  College.  In  all  these  matters  he  seems 
to  have  won  more  or  less  definite  accomplishment,  and 
from  most  of  them  his  versatile  literary  talent  took,  at 
one  time  or  another,  an  effective  toll.  The  athletic 
musician,  who  composed  his  own  songs  and  gloried  in 
a  gallop,  was  to  make  verse  simulate,  as  hardly  any 
artificer  had  made  it  before,  the  labyrinthine  meander- 
ings  of  the  fugue  and  the  rhythmic  swing  of  hoofs. 

Of  all  these  varied  aims  and  aspirations,  of  all  in 
short  that  was  going  on  under  the  surface  of  this 
brilliant  and  versatile  Robert  Browning  of  twenty,  we 
have  a  chaotic  reflection  in  the  famous  fragment  Paul- 
ine. The  quite  peculiar  animosity  with  which  its 
author  in  later  life  regarded  this  single  u  crab  "  of  his 
youthful  tree  of  knowledge  only  adds  to  its  interest. 
He  probably  resented  the  frank  expression  of  passion, 
nowhere  else  approached  in  his  works.  Yet  passion 
only  agitates  the  surface  of  Pauline.  Whether  Paul- 
ine herself  stand  for  an  actual  woman — Miss  Flower 
or  another — or  for  the  nascent  spell  of  womanhood — 
she  plays,  for  one  who  is  ostensibly  the  heroine  of  the 
poem,  a  discouragingly  minor  part.     No  wonder  she 


EARLY    LIFE 


*3 


felt  tempted  to  advise  the  burning  of  so  unflattering  a 
record.  Instead  of  the  lyric  language  of  love,  she 
has  to  receive  the  confessions  of  a  subtle  psychologist, 
who  must  unlock  the  tumultuous  story  of  his  soul 
"  before  he  can  sing."  And  these  confessions  are  of 
a  kind  rare  even  amongst  self-revelations  of  genius. 
Pauline's  lover  is  a  dreamer,  but  a  dreamer  of  an  un- 
common species.  He  is  preoccupied  with  the  proc- 
esses of  his  mind,  but  his  mind  ranges  wildly  over 
the  universe  and  chafes  at  the  limitations  it  is  forced 
to  recognise.  Mill,  a  master,  not  to  say  a  pedant,  of 
introspection,  recognised  with  amazement  the  "  in- 
tense self-consciousness  "  of  this  poet,  and  self-con-_ 
sciousness  is  the  key-note  which  persists  through  all  its 
changing  harmonies.  It  is  the  self-consciousness  of 
a  soul  compelled  by  quick  and  eager  senses  and  vivid 
intelligence  to  recognise  a  host  of  outer  realities  not 
itself,  which  it  constantly  strives  to  bring  into  relation 
with  itself,  as  constantly  baffled  and  thrown  back  by 
the  obstinate  objectivity  of  that  outer  world.  A  pure 
dreamer  would  have  "  contentedly  lived  in  a  nut-shell 
and  imagined  himself  king  of  infinite  space " ;  a 
purely  scientific  intelligence  would  have  applied  him- 
self to  the  patient  mastery  of  facts ;  in  the  hero  of 
Pauline  the  despotic  senses  and  intellect  of  science 
and  the  imperious  imagination  of  the  poet  appear  to 
coexist  and  to  contend,  and  he  tosses  to  and  fro  in  a 
fever  of  fitful  efforts,  continually  frustrated,  to  find 
complete  spiritual  response  and  expressiveness  in  the 
intractable  maze  of  being.  There  had  indeed  been 
an   earlier   time  when   the  visions   of  old   poets   had 


14  BROWNING 

wholly  sufficed  him ;  and  the  verses  in  which  he  re- 
calls them  have  almost  the  pellucid  charm  of  Homer, — 

"  Never  morn  broke  clear  as  those 
On  the  dim  clustered  isles  in  the  blue  sea, 
The  deep  groves,  and  white  temples,  and  wet  caves." 

But  growing  intellect  demanded  something  more. 
Shelley,  the  "  Sun-treader,"  weaving  soul  and  sense 
into  a  radiant  vesture  "  from  his  poet's  station  between 
both,"  did  much  to  sustain  him  ;  Plato's  more  explicit 
and  systematic  idealism  gave  him  for  a  while  a 
stronger  assurance.  But  disillusion  broke  in  :  "  Sud- 
denly, without  heart-wreck  I  awoke ;  I  said,  'twas 
beautiful,  yet  but  a  dream,  and  so  adieu  to  it ! " 
Then  the  passionate  restlessness  of  his  nature  stings 
him  forth  afresh.  He  steeps  himself  in  the  concrete 
vitality  of  things,  lives  in  imagination  through  u  all 
life  where  it  is  most  alive,"  immerses  himself  in  all 
that  is  most  beautiful  and  intense  in  Nature,  so  ful- 
filling, it  might  seem,  his  passionate  craving  to  "  be 
all,  have,  see,  know,  taste,  feel  all," — yet  only  to  feel 
that  satisfaction  is  not  here : 

"  My  soul  saddens  when  it  looks  beyond  : 
I  cannot  be  immortal,  taste  all  joys ;  " 

only  the  sickness  of  satiety.  •  But  when  all  joy  was 
tasted,  what  then  ?  If  there  was  any  "  crowning  " 
state,  it  could  only  be,  thought  Browning,  one  in 
which  the  soul  looked  up  to  the  unattainable  infinity 
of  God. 

Such  seem  to  be  the  outlines  of  the  mental  history 


EARLY    LIFE 


15 


which  passes  before  us,  brilliant  and  incoherent  as  a 
dream,  in  Pauline,  The  material,  vast  and  many- 
sided  as  it  is,  is  not  fully  mastered ;  but  there  is  noth- 
ing merely  imitative ;  it  is  everywhere  Browning,  and 
no  mere  disciple  of  Shelley  or  another,  who  is  palpa- 
bly at  work.  The  influence  of  Shelley  seems,  in- 
deed, to  have  been  already  outgrown  when  Pauline 
was  written ;  Browning  gloried  in  him  and  in  his  in- 
creasing fame,  but  he  felt  that  his  own  aims  and 
destiny  were  different.  Rossetti,  a  few  years  later, 
took  Pauline  to  be  the  work  of  an  unconscious  pre- 
Raphaelite  ;  and  there  is  enough  of  subtle  simplicity, 
of  curious  minuteness,  in  the  details  to  justify  the 
error.  In  the  meantime  many  outward  circumstances 
conspired  to  promote  the  "  advance "  which  every 
line  of  it  foretold.  His  old  mentor  of  the  Incondita 
days,  W.  J.  Fox,  in  some  sort  a  Browningite  before 
Browning,  reviewed  Pauline  in  The  Monthly  Reposi- 
tory (April,  1833)  with  generous  but  discerning  praise. 
This  was  the  beginning  of  a  warm  friendship  between 
the  two,  which  ended  only  with  Fox's  death.  It  was 
founded  upon  hearty  admiration  on  both  sides,  and  no 
man  living  was  better  qualified  to  scatter  the  morbid 
films  that  clung  about  the  expanding  genius  of  young 
Browning  than  this  robust  and  masculine  critic  and 
preacher.  A  few  months  later  came  an  event  of 
which  we  know  very  little,  but  which  at  least  did 
much  to  detach  him  from  the  limited  horizons  of 
Camberwell.  At  the  invitation  of  M.  Benckhausen, 
Russian  consul-general,  Browning  accompanied  him, 
in  the  winter  of  1833-34,  on  a  special  mission  to  St. 

.  ><Ti  *  A  ^  r^N. 

/^OFTHC  ^ 

(   UNIVERSITY 


1 6  BROWNING 

Petersburg.  The  journey  left  few  apparent  traces  on 
his  work.  But  he  remembered  the  rush  of  the  sledge 
through  the  forest  when,  half  a  century  later,  he  told 
the  thrilling  tale  of  Ivan  Ivanovitch.  And  even  the 
modest  intimacy  with  affairs  of  State  obtainable  in  the 
office  of  a  consul-general  seems  to  have  led  his 
thoughts  seriously  to  diplomacy  as  a  career.  One 
understands  that  to  the  future  dissector  of  a  Hohen- 
stiel-Schwangau  and  a  Blougram  the  career  might 
present  attractions.  It  marks  the  seriousness  of  his 
ambition  that  he  actually  applied  for  a  post  in  the 
Persian  Embassy.  This  fancy  of  Ferishtah,  like  a 
similar  one  of  ten  years  later,  was  not  gratified,  but 
the  bent  which  was  thus  thwarted  in  practical  life 
disported  itself  freely  in  poetry,  and  the  marks  of  the 
diplomatist  in  posse  are  pretty  clearly  legible  in  the 
subtle  political  webs  which  make  up  so  much  of  the 
plots  of  Strafford,  King  Victor,  and  Sordello. 

But  much  sharper  rebuffs  than  this  would  have 
failed  to  disturb  the  immense  buoyancy  of  Browning's 
temperament.  He  was  twenty-three,  and  in  the  first 
flush  of  conscious  power.  His  exuberant  animal 
spirits  flowed  out  in  whimsical  talk ;  he  wrote  letters 
of  the  gayest  undergraduate  insouciance  to  Fox,  and 
articles  full  of  extravagant  jesting  for  The  Trifler,  an 
amateur  journal  which  received  the  lucubrations  of  his 
little  circle.  He  enjoyed  life  like  a  boy,  and  shared 
its  diversions  like  a  man  about  town.  These  super- 
ficial vivacities  were  the  slighter  play  of  a  self-con- 
sciousness which  in  its  deeper  recesses  was  steadily 
gathering  power,  richness,  and  assurance.     His  keen 


EARLY    LIFE  1 7 

A 

social  instincts  saved  him  from  most  of  the  infirmities 
of  budding  genius;  but  the  poems  he  contributed  to 
Fox's  journal  during  the  following  two  years  (1834-36) 
show  a  significant  predilection  for  imagining  the  ex- 
travagances and  fanaticisms  of  lonely  self-centred 
minds.  Joannes  Agricola,  sublime  on  the  dizzy  pin- 
nacle of  his  theological  arrogance,  looking  up  through 
the  gorgeous  roof  of  heaven  and  assured  that  nothing 
can  stay  his  course  to  his  destined  abode,  God's 
breast;  Porphyria' s  lover,  the  more  uncanny  fanatic 
who  murders  with  a  smile ;  the  young  man  who  in 
his  pride  of  power  sees  in  the  failures  and  mistakes  of 
other  men  examples  providentially  intended  for  his 
guidance, — it  was  such  subjects  as  these  that  touched 
Browning's  fancy  in  those  ardent  and  sanguine  years. 
He  probably  entered  with  keener  relish  into  these  ex- 
travagances than  his  maturer  wisdom  approved.  It  is 
significant,  at  any  rate,  that  when  Agricola  and  Por- 
phyria* s  Lover  were  republished  in  The  Bells  and  Pome- 
granates of  1842,  a  new  title,  Madhouse  Cells^  gave 
warning  that  their  insanity  was  not  to  be  attributed  to 
the  poet.  The  verses  "  Still  ailing  wind,"  he  qualified 
in  a  yet  more  explicit  fashion  twenty  years  later,  for 
they  are  the  young  man's  poem  which  James  Lee's 
wife  reads  "  under  the  cliff,"  and  subjects  to  her  aus- 
tere and  disillusioned  criticism.  But  they  mark  the 
drift  of  Browning  of  the  mid-'Thirties,  so  far  as  they 
go,  clearly  enough.  ^Fortunately,  however,  we  are  not 
dependent  upon  these  slight  clues.  For  during  the 
winter  months  of  1834-35  he  was  occupied  in  por- 
traying a  far  more  imposing  embodiment  of  the  young 


1 8  BROWNING 

man's  pride  of  power,  a  Joannes  Agricola  of  equally 
superb  confidence  and  far  more  magnificent  ideals. 
In  April,  1835,  Browning  was  able  to  announce  to  his 
good  friend  Fox  the  completion  of  Paracelsus. 

He  owed  the  suggestion  to  another  new  acquaint- 
ance, whose  intimacy,  like  that  of  the  Russian  con- 
sul-general, marks  the  fascination  exercised  by  young 
Browning  upon  men  of  antecedents,  race,  and  social 
standing  widely  different  from  his  own.  Count  Ame- 
dee  de  Ripert  Monclar  was  a  French  royalist  and 
refugee ;  he  was  also  an  enthusiastic  student  of  history. 
Possibly  he  recognised  an  affinity  between  the  vaguely 
outlined  dreams  of  Pauline's  lover  and  those  of  the 
historic  Paracelsus;  and  he  may  well  have  thought 
that  the  task  of  grappling  with  definite  historic  ma- 
terial would  steady  the  young  poet's  hand.  We  could 
applaud  the  acuteness  of  the  suggestion  with  more 
confidence  had  not  the  Count  had  an  unlucky  after- 
thought, which  he  regarded  as  fatal,  to  the  effect  that 
the  story  of  Paracelsus,  however  otherwise  adapted  to 
the  creator  of  Pauline's  lover,  was  entirely  destitute 
of  a  Pauline.  There  was  no  opening  for  love.  But 
Pauline,  with  all  her  warm  erotic  charms  and  her 
sparkling  French  prose,  was  the  most  unsubstantial 
and  perishable  thing  in  the  poem  which  bore  her  name  : 
she  and  the  spirit  which  begot  her  had  vanished  like  a 
noisome  smoke,  and  Browning  threw  himself  with 
undiminished  ardour  upon  the  task  of  interpreting  a 
career  in  which  the  sole  sources  of  romance  and  of 
tragedy  appeared  to  be  the  passion  for  knowledge  and 
the  arrogance  of  discovery. 


EARLY    LIFE 


*9 


For  it  is  quite  clear  that,  whatever  criticisms  Brown- 
ing finally  brought  to  bear  upon  Paracelsus,  his  atti- 
tude towards  him,  at  no  time  hostile,  was  at  the  out- 
set rather  that  of  a  literary  champion,  vindicating  a 
man  of  original  genius  from  the  calumnies  of  igno- 
rance and  dulness.  This  view,  then  rather  unusual, 
was  a  very  natural  one  for  him  to  take,  Paracelsus 
being  among  the  many  keen  interests  of  the  elder 
Browning.1  It  is  a  strange  mistake  to  suppose,  with 
a  recent  very  ingenious  commentator,  that  Browning, 
eager  to  destroy  the  fallacy  of  intellectual  pride,  sin- 
gled out  Paracelsus  as  a  crucial  example  of  the  futili- 
ties of  intellect.  On  the  contrary,  he  filled  his  anno- 
tations with  documentary  evidences  which  attest  not 
only  the  commanding  scientific  genius  of  Paracelsus, 
but  the  real  significance  of  his  achievements,  even  for 
the  modern  world.  In  the  intellectual  hunger  of 
Paracelsus,  in  that  "  insatiable  avidity  of  penetrating 
the  secrets  of  nature  "  which  his  follower  Bitiskius 
(approvingly  quoted  by  Browning)  ascribed  to  him,  he 
saw  a  fascinating  realisation  of  his  own  vague  and 
chaotic  "  restlessness."  Here  was  a  spirit  made  up 
in  truth  "of  an  intensest  life,"  driven  hither  and 
thither  by  the  hunger  for  intellectual  mastery  of  the 
universe ;  and  Browning,  far  from  convicting  him  of 
intellectual  futility,  has  made  him  actually  divine  the 
secret  he  sought,  and,  in  one  of  the  most  splendid  pas- 
sages of  modern  poetry,  declare  with  his  dying  lips  a 
faith  which  is  no  less  Browning's  than  his  own. 

1  His  library,  as  I  am  informed  by  Prof.  Hall  Griffin,  contained 
a  copy  of  the  works  of  Paracelsus,  doubtless  that  used  by  his  son. 


20  BROWNING 

While  he  thus  lavished  his  utmost  power  on  por- 
traying the  soaring  genius  of  Paracelsus,  as  he  con- 
ceived it,  he  turned  impatiently  away  from  the  husk 
of  popular  legend  by  which  it  was  half  obscured.  He 
shrank  from  no  attested  fact,  however  damaging;  but 
he  brushed  away  the  accretions  of  folk-lore,  however 
picturesque.  The  attendant  spirit  who  enabled  Para- 
celsus to  work  his  marvellous  cures,  and  his  no  less 
renowned  Sword,  were  for  Browning  contemptible 
futilities.  Yet  a  different  way  of  treating  legend  lay 
nearer  to  the  spirit  of  contemporary  poetry.  Goethe 
had  not  long  before  evolved  his  Mephistopheles  from 
the  "  attendant  spirit  "  attached  by  that  same  sixteenth 
century  to  the  Paracelsus  of  Protestantism,  Faust; 
Tennyson  was  already  meditating  a  scene  full  of  the 
enchantment  of  the  Arthurian  sword  Excalibur. 
Browning's  peremptory  rejection  of  such  springs  of 
poetry  marks  one  of  his  limitations  as  a  poet.  Much 
of  the  finest  poetry  of  Faust,  as,  in  a  lower  degree, 
of  the  Idylls,  is  won  by  a  subtle  transformation  of  the 
rude  stuff  of  popular  imagination  :  for  Browning,  with 
rare  exceptions,  this  rude  stuff  was  dead  matter,  im- 
pervious to  his  poetic  insight,  and  irresponsive  to  the 
magic  of  his  touch.  Winnowing  the  full  ears,  catch- 
ing eagerly  the  solid  and  stimulating  grain,  he  hardly 
heeded  the  golden  gleam  of  the  chaff  as  it  flew  by. 

He  did  not,  however,  refrain  from  accentuating  his 
view  of  the  story  by  interweaving  in  it  some  gracious 
figures  of  his  own.  Festus,  the  honest,  devoted,  but 
somewhat  purblind  friend,  who  offers  Paracelsus  the 
criticism  of  sober  common-sense,  and  is  vindicated — 


EARLY    LIFE  21 

at  the  bar  of  common-sense — by  his  great  comrade's 
tragic  end;  Michal,  an  exquisitely  tender  outline  of 
womanhood,  even  more  devoted,  and  even  less  dis- 
tinguished ;  and  the  u  Italian  poet  "  Aprile,  a  creature 
of  genius,  whose  single  overpowering  thought  avails 
to  break  down  the  stronghold  of  Paracelsus's  else  un- 
assailable conviction.  Aprile,  who  lives  for  love  as 
Paracelsus  for  knowledge,  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
Shelley,  but  he  has  unmistakable  Shelleyan  traits,  and 
the  dreamy  pageant  of  his  imaginary  creations  might 
stand  for  a  summary  review  of  Shelley's  work.  Had 
Shelley  lived,  he  might  have  come  nearer  than  any  one 
else  to  fulfilling  the  rounded  and  complete  ideal  of 
which  Paracelsus  and  Aprile  were  dissevered  halves : 
the  greater  part  of  his  actual  achievement  belonged, 
Browning  evidently  thought,  to  the  category  of  those 
dazzling  but  imperfectly  objective  visions  which  he 
ascribes  to  his  Aprile.  But  Shelley — the  poet  of 
Alastor,  the  passionate  "  lover  of  Love,"  was  yet  the 
fittest  embodiment  of  that  other  finer  spiritual  energy 
which  Paracelsus  in  his  Faustian  passion  for  knowl- 
edge had  ruthlessly  put  from  him.  Sixteen  years  later, 
Browning  was  to  define  in  memorable  words  what  he 
held  to  be  the  u  noblest  and  predominating  character- 
istic of  Shelley  " — viz.,  cc  his  simultaneous  perception 
of  Power  and  Love  in  the  Absolute  and  of  Beauty 
and  Good  in  the  concrete,  while  he  throws,  from  his 
poet's  station  between  both,  swifter,  subtler,  and  more 
numerous  films  for  the  connection  of  each  with  each 
than  have  been  thrown  by  any  modern  artificer  of 
whom  I  have  knowledge."     This  divining  and  glori- 


22  BROWNING 

fying  power  it  is  that  Browning  ascribes  to  Love ;  the 
lack  of  it  is  in  his  conception  the  tragic  flaw  which 
brings  to  the  ground  the  superbly  gifted  genius  of 
Paracelsus.  This  genuine  and  original  tragic  motive 
is  not  worked  out  with  uniform  power;  his  degenera- 
tion, his  failures,  are  painted  with  the  uncertain  hand 
of  one  little  acquainted  with  either.  But  all  the  splen- 
dour of  a  young  imagination,  charged  with  the  passion 
for  truth  and  for  beauty,  glows  in  the  pictures  of  the 
great  moments  in  Paracelsus's  career, — the  scene  in 
the  quiet  Wiirzburg  garden,  where  he  conquers  the 
doubts  of  Festus  and  Michal  by  the  magnificent  as- 
surance of  his  faith  in  his  divine  calling;  and  that  in 
the  hospital  cell  at  Salzburg,  where  his  fading  mind 
anticipates  at  the  point  of  death  the  clearness  of  im- 
mortal vision  as  he  lays  bare  the  conquered  secret  of 
the  world. 

That  Paracelsian  secret  of  the  world  was  for 
Browning  doubtless  the  truth,  though  he  never  again 
expounded  it  so  boldly.  Paracelsus's  reply  to  the 
anxious  inquiry  of  Festus  whether  he  is  sure  of  God's 
forgiveness  :  "  I  have  lived  !  We  have  to  live  alone 
to  well  set  forth  God's  praise  " — might  stand  as  a  text 
before  the  works  of  Browning.  In  all  life  he  sees 
the  promise  and  the  potency  of  God, — in  the  teeming 
vitalities  of  the  lower  world,  in  the  creative  energies 
of  man,  in  the  rich  conquests  of  his  Art,  in  his  myth- 
woven  Nature.  "  God  is  glorified  in  Man,  and  to 
man's  glory  vowed  I  soul  and  limb."  The  historic 
Paracelsus  failed  most  signally  in  his  attempt  to  con- 
nect vast  conceptions  of  Nature  akin  to  this  with  the 


EARLY    LIFE 


23 


detail  of  his  empiric  discoveries.  Browning,  with  his 
mind,  as  always,  set  upon  things  psychical,  attributes 
to  him  a  parallel  incapacity  to  connect  his  far-reaching 
vision  of  humanity  with  the  gross,  malicious,  or 
blockish  specimens  of  the  genus  Man  whom  he  en- 
countered in  the  details  of  practice.  It  was  the 
problem  which  Browning  himself  was  to  face,  and  in 
his  own  view  triumphantly  to  solve ;  and  Paracelsus, 
rising  into  the  clearness  of  his  dying  vision,  becomes 
the  mouthpiece  of  Browning's  own  criticism  of  his 
failure,  the  impassioned  advocate  of  the  Love  which 
with  him  is  less  an  elemental  energy  drawing  things 
into  harmonious  fusion  than  a  subtle  weapon  of  the 
intellect,  making  it  wise 

"  To  trace  love's  faint  beginnings  in  mankind, 
To  know  even  hate  is  but  a  mask  of  love's, 
To  see  a  good  in  evil  and  a  hope 
In  ill-success." 

Paracelsus  is  a  clear  self-revelation,  rich  and  inspired 
where  it  marks  out  the  circle  of  sublime  ideas  within 
which  the  poet  was  through  life  to  move,  and  by 
which  he  was,  as  a  man  and  a  thinker,  if  not  alto- 
gether as  a  poet,  to  live ;  reticent  where  it  approaches 
the  complexities  of  the  concrete  which  the  poet  was 
not  yet  sufficiently  mature  to  handle,  restrained  where 
increased  power  was  to  breed  a  too  generous  self- 
indulgence,  a  too  manifest  aptitude  for  glorifying  and 
drinking  deep.  It  is  flushed  with  the  peculiar  mellow 
beauty  which  comes  if  at  all  to  the  early  manhood  of 
genius, — a  beauty  like  that  of  Amiens  or  Lincoln  in 


24  BROWNING 

Gothic  art,  where  the  crudeness  of  youth  is  over-, 
worn,  and  the  problems  of  full  maturity,  though  fore- 
shadowed and  foreseen,  have  not  yet  begun  to  perplex 
or  to  disintegrate. 


CHAPTER  II 

ENLARGING    HORIZONS.       SORDELLO 

Zwei  Seelen  wohnen,  ach,  in  meiner  Brust, 
Die  eine  will  sich  von  der  andern  trennen; 
Die  eine  halt  in  derber  Liebeslust 
Sich  an  die  Welt  mit  klammernden  Organen ; 
Die  andre  hebt  gewaltsam  sich  vom  Dust 
Zu  den  Gefilden  hoher  Ahnen. 

— Faust. 

Paracelsus,  though  only  a  series  of  quasi-dramatic 
scenes,  suggested  considerable  undeveloped  capacity 
for  drama.  From  a  career  in  which  the  most  sensa- 
tional event  was  a  dismissal  from  a  professorship,  and 
the  absorbing  passion  the  thirst  for  knowledge,  he  had 
elicited  a  tragedy  of  the  scientific  intellect.  But  it 
was  equally  obvious  that  the  writer's  talent  was  not 
purely  dramatic ;  and  that  his  most  splendid  and  origi- 
nal endowments  required  some  other  medium  than 
drama  for  their  full  unfolding.  The  author  of  Para- 
celsus was  primarily  concerned  with  character,  and  with 
action  as  the  mirror  of  character;  agreeing  in  both 
points  substantially  with  the  author  of  Hamlet.  But 
while  Browning's  energetic  temperament  habitually 
impelled  him  to  represent  character  in  action,  his  im- 
aginative strength  did  not  lie  in  the  region  of  action 
at  all,  but  in  the  region  of  thought ;  the  kinds  of  ex- 
pression of  which  he  had  boundless  command  were 
rather  those  which  analyse  character  than  those  which 

25 


26  BROWNING 

exhibit  it.  The  two  impulses  derived  from  tempera- 
ment and  from  imagination  thus  drew  him  in  somewhat 
diverse  directions ;  and  for  some  years  the  joy  in  the 
stir  and  stress  and  many-sided  life  of  drama  competed 
with  the  powerful  bent  of  the  portrayer  of  souls,  until 
the  two  contending  currents  finally  coalesced  in  the 
dramatic  monologues  of  Men  and  Women.  In  1835 
the  solution  was  not  yet  found,  but  the  five  years 
which  followed  were  to  carry  Browning,  not  without 
crises  of  perplexity  and  hesitation,  far  on  his  way  to- 
wards it.  Paracelsus  was  no  sooner  completed  than  he 
entered  upon  his  kindred  but  more  esoteric  portrayal 
of  the  soul-history  of  Sordello, — a  study  in  which, 
with  the  dramatic  form,  almost  all  the  dramatic  excel- 
lences of  its  predecessors  are  put  aside.  But  the  poet 
was  outgrowing  the  method ;  the  work  hung  fire ;  and 
we  find  him,  before  he  had  gone  far  with  the  per- 
plexed record  of  that  u  ineffectual  angel,"  already 
"  eager  to  freshen  a  jaded  mind  by  diverting  it  to  the 
healthy  natures  of  a  grand  epoch."  ! 

The  open-eyed  man  of  the  world  and  of  affairs  in 
Browning  was  plainly  clamouring  for  more  expression 
than  he  had  yet  found.  An  invitation  from  the  first 
actor  of  the  day  to  write  a  tragedy  for  him  was  not 
likely,  under  these  circumstances,  to  be  declined  ;  and 
during  the  whole  winter  of  1836-37  the  story  of  Sor- 
dello remained  untold,  while  its  author  plunged,  with 
a  security  and  relish  which  no  one  who  knew  only  his 
poetry  could  have  foretold,  into  the  pragmatic  politics 
and  diplomatic  intrigues  of  Strafford.     The  perform- 

1  Preface  to  the  first  edition  of  Strafford  (subsequently  omitted). 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS 


27 


ance  of  the  play  on  May  1,  1837,  introduced  further 
distractions.  And  Sordello  had  made  little  further  prog- 
ress, when,  in  the  April  of  the  following  year,  Brown- 
ing embarked  on  a  sudden  but  memorable  trip  to  the 
South  of  Europe.  It  gave  him  his  first  glimpse  of 
Italy  and  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  plenty  of  the  rough 
homely  intercourse  with  men  which  he  loved.  He 
travelled,  in  a  fashion  that  suited  his  purse  and  his 
hardy  nature,  by  a  merchant  vessel  from  London  to 
the  Adriatic.  The  food  was  uneatable,  the  horrors  of 
dirt  and  discomfort  portentous ;  but  he  bore  them 
cheerfully  for  the  sake  of  one  advantage, — u  the  soli-" 
tariness  of  the  one  passenger  among  all  those  rough 
new  creatures.  /  like  it  much,  and  soon  get  deep  into 
their  friendship. " 1  Grim  tragedies  of  the  high-seas, 
too,  came  within  his  ken.2  Two  or  three  moments  of 
the  voyage  stand  out  for  us  with  peculiar  distinctness  : 
the  gorgeous  sunset  off  Cadiz  bay,  when  he  watched 
the  fading  outlines  of  Gibraltar  and  Cape  St.  Vin- 
cent,— ghostly  mementos  of  England, — not  as  Arnold's 
weary  Titan,  but  as  a  Herakles  stretching  a  hand  of 
help  across  the  seas  ;  the  other  sunset  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean, when  Etna  loomed  against  the  flaming  sky  ;  3 
and,  between  them,  that  glaring  noontide  on  the  African 
shore,  when  the  "  solitary  passenger,"  weary  of  ship- 
board and  seasickness,  longed  for  his  good  horse  York 
in  the  stable  at  home,  and  scribbled  his  ballad  of  brave 
horses,  How  they  brought  the  Good  News,  in  a  blank 

1  R.  B.  to  E.  B.  B.,  i.  505. 

2  Cf.  the  long  letter  to  Miss  Haworth,  Orr,  Life,  p.  96. 

3  Cf.  Sordello,  bk.  iii.  end. 


28  BROWNING 

leaf  of  Bartoli's  Simboli.  The  voyage  ended  at  Trieste  j 
and  thence  he  passed  to  Venice,  brooded  among  her 
ruined  palaces  over  Sordello,  and  "English  Eyebright " 
and  all  the  destiny  and  task  of  the  poet ;  and  so  turned 
homeward,  through  the  mountains,  gathering  vivid 
glimpses  as  he  went  of  "  all  my  places  and  castles,"  l 
and  laying  by  a  memory,  soon  to  germinate,  of  u  de- 
licious A  solo,"  "  palpably  lire-clothed  "  in  the  glory  of 
his  young  imagination. 

Thus  when,  in  1840,  Sordello  was  at  length  complete, 
it  bore  the  traces  of  many  influences  and  many  moods. 
It  reflected  the  expanding  ideals  and  the  critical  turn- 
ing-points of  four  years  of  his  life.  In  the  earlier 
books  the  brilliant  yet  self-centred  poet  of  Paracelsus 
is  still  paramount,  and  even  the  "  oddish  boy  "  who 
had  shyly  evolved  Pauline  is  not  entirely  effaced.  But 
in  the  later  books  we  recognise  without  difficulty  the 
man  who  has  mixed  with  the  larger  world,  has  won 
some  fame  in  letters,  has  immersed  himself  in  the  stir- 
ring atmosphere  of  a  supreme  national  conflict,  has 
seen  Italy,  and  has,  in  the  solitude  and  detachment 
from  his  milieu  which  foreign  travel  brings,  girded  up 
his  loins  anew  for  a  larger  and  more  exacting  poetic 
task.  The  tangled  political  dissensions  of  the  time 
are  set  before  us  with  the  baffling  allusiveness  of  the 
expert.  The  Italian  landscape  is  painted,  not  with 
richer  imagination,  for  nothing  in  Browning  exceeds 
some  passages  of  the  earlier  books,  but  with  more 
depth  of  colouring,  more  precision  of  contour  and  ex- 
pression. And  he  has  taken  the  "  sad  dishevelled 
1  lb.,  p.  99. 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS  20, 

form,"  Humanity,  for  his  bride,  the  mate  of  an  art 
which  will  disdain  no  evil  and  turn  away  from  noth- 
ing common,  in  the  service  of  man.  Doubtless  the 
result  was  not  all  gain.  The  intermittent  composition 
and  the  shifting  points  of  view  add  an  element  of  real 
ambiguity  and  indecision  to  faults  of  expression  which 
mainly  spring  from  the  swiftness  and  discursiveness  of 
a  brilliant  and  athletic  intellect.  The  alleged  u  ob- 
scurity "  of  the  poem  is  in  great  part  a  real  obscurity ; 
the  profiles  are  at  times  not  merely  intricate,  but 
blurred.  But  he  had  written  nothing  yet,  and  he  was 
to  write  little  after,  which  surpasses  the  finest  pages 
of  Sordello  in  close-packed,  if  somewhat  elusive,  splen- 
dour ;  the  soil,  as  he  wrote  of  Italy,  is  full  of  loose  fer- 
tility, and  gives  out  intoxicating  odours  at  every  foot- 
fall. Moreover,  he  can  now  paint  the  clash  and  com- 
motion of  crowds,  the  turmoil  of  cities  and  armies, 
with  superb  force — a  capacity  of  which  there  is  hardly 
a  trace  in  Paracelsus.  Sordello  himself  stands  out  less 
clearly  than  Paracelsus  from  the  canvas ;  but  the  sym- 
pathetic reader  finally  admits  that  this  visionary  being, 
who  gleams  ghostlike  at  the  end  of  all  the  avenues  and 
vistas  of  the  poem,  whom  we  are  always  looking  at 
but  never  rightly  see,  is  an  even  more  fascinating 
figure. 

He  is  however  less  historical,  in  spite  of  the  ab- 
struse historic  background  upon  which  he  moves.  Of 
the  story  of  Paracelsus  Browning  merely  reinterpreted 
the  recorded  facts;  whereas  he  brushes  aside  the 
greater  part  of  the  Sordello  story,  as  told  confusedly 
and  inconsistently  by  Italian  and  Provencal  tradition. 


3<D  BROWNING 

The  whole  later  career  of  the  Mantuan  poet  as  an 
accomplished  and  not  unsuccessful  man  of  the  world, 
as  the  friend  of  Raymond  of  Toulouse  and  Charles 
of  Anjou,  rewarded  with  ample  estates  by  the  latter 
for  substantial  services, — is  either  rejected  as  myth,  or 
purposely  ignored.  To  all  appearance,  the  actual 
Sordello  by  no  means  lacked  ability  to  "  fit  to  the 
finite  "  such  "  infinity  "  as  he  possessed.  And  if  he 
had  the  chance,  as  is  obscurely  hinted  at  the  close,  of 
becoming,  like  Dante,  the  "  Apollo  "  of  the  Italian 
people,  he  hardly  missed  it  u  through  disbelief  that 
anything  was  to  be  done."  But  the  outward  shell  of 
his  career  included  some  circumstances  which,  had 
they  befallen  a  Dante,  might  have  deeply  moulded  the 
history  of  Italy.  His  close  relations  with  great 
Guelph  and  Ghibelline  families  would  have  offered 
extraordinary  opportunities  to  a  patriot  of  genius, 
which,  for  the  purposes  of  patriotism,  remained  un- 
used. Yet  Dante,  a  patriot  of  genius  if  ever  there 
was  one,  had  given  Sordello  a  position  of  extraordi- 
nary honour  in  the  Purgatory^  had  allowed  him  to  illu- 
minate the  darkness  of  Virgil,  and  to  guide  both  the 
great  poets  towards  the  Gate.  The  contrast  offered 
an  undeniable  problem.  But  Dante  had  himself 
hinted  the  solution  by  placing  Sordello  among  those 
dilatory  souls  whose  tardy  repentance  involved  their 
sojourn  in  the  Antepurgatory.  To  a  mind  preoccu- 
pied, like  Browning's,  with  the  failures  of  aspiring 
souls,  this  hint  naturally  appealed.  He  imagined  his 
Sordello,  too,  as  a  moral  loiterer,  who,  with  extraordi- 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS 


31 


nary  gifts,  failed  by  some  inner  enervating  paralysis  l 
to  make  his  spiritual  quality  explicit;  and  who  im- 
pressed contemporaries  sufficiently  to  start  a  brilliant 
myth  of  what  he  did  not  do,  but  had  to  wait  for  rec- 
ognition until  he  met  the  eye  and  lips  of  Dante.  It 
is  difficult  not  to  suspect  the  influence  of  another 
great  poet.  Sordello  has  no  nearer  parallel  in  litera- 
ture than  Goethe's  Tasso,  a  picture  of  the  eternal  an- 
tagonism between  the  poet  and  the  world,  for  which 
Sordello's  failure  to  "  fit  to  the  finite  his  infinity " 
might  have  served  as  an  apt  motto.  Browning  has 
nowhere  to  our  knowledge  mentioned  Tasso ;  but  he 
has  left  on  record  his  admiration  of  the  beautiful 
sister-drama  Iphigenie.2 

The  elaboration  of  this  conception  is,  however, 
entirely  Browning's  own,  and  discloses  at  every  point 
the  individual  quality  of  his  mind.  Like  Faust,  like 
the  Poet  in  the  Palace  of  Art,  Sordello  bears  the  stamp 
of  an  age  in  which  the  ideal  of  intellect,  art,  culture, 
and  the  ideal  of  humanity,  of  social  service,  have  both 
become  potent  inspirations,  often  in  apparent  conflict, 
and  continually  demanding  a  solution  of  their  differ- 
ences. Faust  breaks  away  from  the  narrow  pedantries 
of  the  schools  in   order  to  heap  upon  his  breast  the 

1  "  Ah  but  to  find 
A  certain  mood  enervate  such  a  mind,"  etc. 

—  Works,  i.  122. 
2  To  E.  B.  £.,  July  7,  1846.     He  is  «  vexed"  at  Landor's  dis- 
paragement of  the  play,  and  quotes  with  approval  Landor's  earlier 
declaration  that  "  nothing  so  Hellenic  had  been  written  these  two 
thousand  years." 


32  BROWNING 

weal  and  woe  of  mankind,  and  to  draw  all  their  life 
and  thought  into  the  compass  of  his  mind.  Tenny- 
son's u  glorious  devil "  (by  a  curious  irony  intended 
for  no  other  than  Faust's  creator)  sets  up  his  lordly 
pleasure-house  apart  from  the  ways  of  men,  until  at 
last,  confuted  by  experience,  he  renounces  his  folly. 
Bordello  cannot  claim  the  mature  and  classical  brilliance 
of  the  one,  nor  the  limpid  melodious  beauty  of  the 
other ;  but  it  approaches  Faust  itself  in  its  subtle 
soundings  of  the  mysteries  of  the  intellectual  life.  It 
f\s  a  young  poet's  attempt  to  cope  with  the  problem  of 
Ithe  poet's  task  and  the  poet's  function,  the  relation  of 
/art  to  life,  and  of  life  to  art.  Neither  Goethe  nor 
)  Tennyson  thought  more  loftily  of  the  possibilities  of 
poetic  art.  And  neither  insisted  more  peremptorily — 
or  rather  assumed  more  unquestioningly — that  it  only 
fulfils  these  possibilities  when  the  poet  labours  in  the 
service  of  man.  He  is  "  earth's  essential  king,"  but 
his  kingship  rests  upon  his  carrying  out  the  kingliest 
of  mottoes — "Ich  dien."  Browning  all  his  life  had 
a  hearty  contempt  for  the  foppery  of  u  Art  for  Art," 
and  he  never  conveyed  it  with  more  incisive  brilliance 
than  in  the  sketch  of  Sordello's  "opposite,"  the 
Troubadour  Eglamor. 

"  How  he  loved  that  art ! 
The  calling  marking  him  a  man  apart 
From  men — one  not  to  care,  take  counsel  for 
Cold  hearts,  comfortless  faces,     .     .     .     since  verse,  the  gift 
Was  his,  and  men,  the  whole  of  them,  must  shift 
Without  it." 

To  Eglamor  his  art  is  a  mysterious  ritual,  of  which 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS 


33 


he  is  the  sacrosanct  priest,  and  his  happy  rhyme  the 
divine  response  vouchsafed  to  him  in  answer.  Such 
beauty  as  he  produces  is  no  effluence  from  a  soul  mat- 
ing itself,  like  Wordsworth's,  u  in  love  and  holy  pas- 
sion with  the  universe,"  but  a  cunning  application  of 
the  approved  recipes  for  effective  writing  current  in 
the  literary  guild  ; — 

"  He,  no  genius  rare, 
Transfiguring  in  fire  or  wave  or  air 
At  will,  but  a  poor  gnome  that,  cloistered  up 
In  some  rock-chamber,  with  his  agate-cup, 
His  topaz-rod,  his  seed-pearl,  in  these  few 
And  their  arrangement  finds  enough  to  do 
For  his  best  art."1 

From  these  mysticisms  and  technicalities  of  Trou- 
badour and  all  other  poetic  guilds  Browning  decisively 
detaches  his  poet.  Sordello  is  not  a  votary  of  poetry ; 
he  does  not  "  cultivate  the  Muse  " ;  he  does  not  even 
prostrate  himself  before  the  beauty  and  wonder  of  the 
visible  universe.  Poetry  is  the  atmosphere  in  which 
he  lives ;  and  in  the  beauty  without  he  recognises  the 
u  dream  come  true "  of  a  soul  which  (like  that  of 
Pauline's  lover)  "  existence  "  thus  "  cannot  satiate, 
cannot  surprise."  "Laugh  thou  at  envious  fate," 
adorers  cry  to  this  inspired  Platonist, 

"  Who,  from  earth's  simplest  combination    .     .     . 
Dost  soar  to  heaven's  complexest  essence,  rife 
With  grandeurs,  unaffronted  to  the  last, 
Equal  to  being  all."  * 

1  Works,  i.  131.  >  lb.,  122. 


^ 


34  BROWNING 

And,  in  truth,  his  power  of  imaginative  apprehension 
has  no  bounds.  From  the  naive  self-reflection  of  his 
boyish  dreams  he  passes  on  to  visions  which  embrace 
a  continually  fuller  measure  of  life,  until  he  forestalls 
the  sublime  Dantesque  conception  of  a  poetry  vast  and 
deep  as  humanity,  where  every  soul  will  stand  forth 
revealed  in  its  naked  truth.  But  he  cannot,  like 
Dante,  put  his  vast  conceptions  into  the  shackles  of 
intelligible  speech.  His  uncompromising  u  infinity  " 
will  not  comply  with  finite  conditions,  and  he  remains 
an  inefficient  and  inarticulate  genius,  a  Hamlet  of 
poetry. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  poem  the  Hamlet  of 
poetry  becomes  likewise  a  Hamlet  of  politics.  He 
aspires  to  serve  the  people  otherwise  than  by  holding 
up  to  them  the  mirror  of  an  all-revealing  poetry. 
Though  by  birth  associated  with  the  aristocratic  and 
imperial  Ghibellines,  his  natural  affinity  is  clearly  with 
the  Church,  which  in  some  sort  stood  for  the  people 
against  the  nobles,  and  for  spirit  against  brute  force. 
We  see  him,  now,  a  frail,  inspired  Shelleyan1  demo- 
crat, pleading  the  Guelph  cause  before  the  great 
Ghibelline  soldier  Salinguerra, — as  he  had  once  pitted 
the  young  might  of  native  song  against  the  accom- 
plished Troubadour  Eglamor.  Salinguerra  is  the  foil 
of  the  political,  as  Eglamor  of  the  literary,  Sordello, 
and  the  dramatic  interest  of  the  whole  poem  focusses 
in  those  two  scenes.  He  had  enough  of  the  lonely 
inspiration  of  genius  to  vanquish  the  craftsman,  but 

1  There  are  other  Shelleyan  traits  in  Sordello — e.  g.,  the  young 
witch  image  (as  in  Pauline)  at  the  opening  of  the  second  book. 


UNIVERSITY 


OF 


oV 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS 

too  little  of  its  large  humanity  to  cope  with  the  astute 
man  of  the  world.  When  Salinguerra,  naturally  de- 
clining his  naive  entreaty  that  he  should  put  his 
Ghibelline  sword  at  the  service  of  the  Guelph,  offers 
Sordello,  on  his  part,  the  command  of  the  imperial 
forces  in  Italy  if  he  will  remain  true  to  the  Ghibelline 
cause,  he  makes  this  finite  world  more  alluring  than  it 
had  ever  been  before  to  the  "  infinite "  Sordello. 
After  a  long  struggle,  he  renounces  the  offer,  and — 
dies,  exhausted  with  the  strain  of  choice. 

What  was  Browning's  judgment  upon  Sordello  ? 
Does  he  regard  him  as  an  idealist  of  aims  too  lofty 
for  success  in  this  world,  and  whose  "  failure  "  im- 
plied his  triumph  in  another,  where  his  "  broken  arc  " 
would  become  the  u  perfect  round  "  ?  Assuredly  not. 
That  might  indeed  be  his  destiny,  but  Browning 
makes  it  perfectly  clear  that  he  failed,  not  because  his 
ideal  was  incommensurate  with  the  conditions  in 
which  he  lived,  but  because  he  lacked  the  supreme 
gift  by  which  the  greatest  of  souls  may  find  their 
function  and  create  their  sphere  in  the  least  promising  ' 
milieu, — a  controlling  and  guiding  passion  of  love.  ^^ 
With  compassionate  tenderness,  as  of  a  father  to  his 
wayward  child,  Browning  in  the  closing  pages  of  the 
poem  lays  his  finger  on  the  ailing  place.  "  Ah,  my 
Sordello,  I  this  once  befriend  and  speak  for  you."  It 
was  true  enough,  in  the  past,  that  Soul,  as  belonging 
to  Eternity,  must  needs  prove  incomplete  for  Time. 
But  is  life  to  be  therefore  only  a  struggle  to  escape 
from  the  shackles  of  the  body  ?  Is  freedom  only  won 
by  death  ?     No,  rejoins  the  poet,  and  the  reply  comes 


36  BROWNING 

from  the  heart  of  his  poetry,  though  at  issue  with 
much  of  his  explicit  doctrine  ;  a  harmony  of  soul 
and  body  is  possible  here  in  which  both  fulfil  their 
functions  : 

"  Like  yonder  breadth  of  watery  heaven,  a  bay, 
And  that  sky-space  of  water,  ray  for  ray 
And  star  for  star,  one  richness  where  they  mixed," 

the  Soul  seeing  its  way  in  Time  without  being  either 
dazzled  by,  or  losing,  its  vision  of  Eternity,  having 
the  saving  clue  of  Love.  Dante,  for  whom  Love 
was  the  pervading  spirit  of  the  universe,  and  the  be- 
ginning and  end  of  his  inspiration,  wrought  his  vision 
of  eternal  truth  and  his  experience  of  the  passing  lives 
of  men  into  such  a  harmony  with  unexampled  power ; 
and  the  comparison,  implicit  in  every  page  of  Sordello, 
is  driven  home  with  almost  scornful  bitterness  on  the 
last :  — 

««  What  he  should  have  been, 
Could  be,  and  was  not — the  one  step  too  mean 
For  him  to  take — we  suffer  at  this  day 
Because  of:  Ecelin  had  pushed  away 
Its  chance  ere  Dante  could  arrive  and  take 
That  step  Sordello  spurned,  for  the  world's  sake. 

.     .     .     A  sorry  farce 
Such  life  is,  after  all !  " 

The  publication  of  Sordello  in  1 840  closes  the  first 
phase  of  Browning's  literary  career.  By  the  great  ma- 
jority of  those  who  had  hailed  the  splendid  promise 
of  Paracelsus,  the  author  of  Sordello  was  frankly  given 
up.     Surprisingly    few   thought    it    worth   while    to 


ENLARGING    HORIZONS 


37 


wrestle  with  the  difficult  book.  It  was  the  day  of  the 
gentle  literary  public  which  had  a  few  years  before 
recoiled  from  Sartor  Resartus,  and  which  found  in  the 
difficulty  of  a  book  the  strongest  presumption  against 
it.  A  later  generation,  leavened  by  Carlyle,  came 
near  to  regarding  difficulty  as  a  presumption  in  its 
favour,  and  this  more  strenuous  and  athletic  attitude 
towards  literature  was  among  the  favouring  conditions 
which  brought  Browning  at  length  into  vogue. 


CHAPTER  HI 

MATURING    METHODS.       DRAMAS    AND    DRAMATIC 
LYRICS 

Since  Chaucer  was  alive  and  hale, 
No  man  hath  walk'd  along  our  roads  with  step 
So  active,  so  inquiring  eye,  or  tongue 
So  varied  in  discourse. 

— LANDOR. 

The  memorable  moment  when  Browning,  standing 
on  the  ruined  palace-step  at  Venice,  had  taken  Hu- 
manity for  his  mate,  opened  an  epoch  in  his  poetic 
life  to  which  the  later  books  of  Sordello  form  a  splen- 
did prelude.  For  the  Browning  of  1840  it  was  no 
longer  a  sufficient  task  to  trace  the  epochs  in  the  spir- 
itual history  of  lonely  idealists,  to  pursue  the  problem 
of  existence  in  minds  themselves  preoccupied  with  its 
solution.  "  Soul  "  is  still  his  fundamental  preoccupa- 
tion ;  but  the  continued  play  of  an  eager  intellect  and 
vivacious  senses  upon  life  has  immensely  multiplied 
the  points  of  concrete  experience  which  it  vivifies  and 
transfigures  to  his  eyes.  It  is  as  if  a  painter  trained 
in  the  school  of  Raphael  or  Lionardo  had  discovered 
that  he  could  use  the  minute  and  fearless  brush  of  the 
Flemings  in  the  service  of  their  ideals. /He  pursues 
soul  in  all  its  rich  multiplicity,  in  the  tortuosities  and 
dark  abysses  of  character;  he  forces  crowds  of  sordid, 
grotesque,  or  commonplace   facts   to  become  its  ex- 

38 


MATURING    METHODS 


39 


pressive  speech ;  he  watches  its  thought  and  passion 
projected  into  the  tide  of  affairs,  caught  up  in  the 
clash  and  tangle  of  plot.  In  all  these  three  ways  the 
Dramas  and  Dramatic  Lyrics  and  Romances,  which 
were  to  be  his  poetic  occupation  during  the  Forties, 
detach  themselves  sharply  from  Paracelsus  and  the  early 
books  of  Sordello.  A  poem  like  The  Laboratory  (1844), 
for  instance,  stands  at  almost  the  opposite  pole  of  art 
to  these.  All  that  Browning  neglected  or  veiled  in 
Paracelsus  he  here  thrusts  into  stern  relief.  The  pas- 
sion and  crime  there  faintly  discerned  in  the  back- 
ground of  ideally  beautiful  figures  are  here  his  absorb- 
ing theme.  The  curious  technicalities  of  the  chem- 
ist's workshop,  taken  for  granted  in  Paracelsus^  are 
now  painted  with  a  realism  reminiscent  of  Romeo's 
Apothecary  and  The  Alchemist.  And  the  outward 
drama  of  intrigue,  completely  effaced  in  Paracelsus  by 
the  inward  drama  of  soul,  sounds  delusive  scorn  and 
laughter  in  the  background,  the  more  sinister  because 
it  is  not  seen.  These  lyrics  and  romances  are  "  dra- 
matic "  not  only  in  the  sense  that  the  speakers  ex- 
press, as  Browning  insisted,  other  minds  and  senti- 
ments than  his  own,  but  in  the  more  legitimate  sense 
that  they  are  plucked  as  it  were  out  of  the  living  or- 
ganism of  a  drama,  all  the  vital  issues  of  which  can 
be  read  in  their  self-revelation. 

A  poet  whose  lyrics  were  of  this  type  might  be  ex- 
pected to  find  in  drama  proper  his  free,  full,  and  nat- 
ural expression.  /This  was  not  altogether  the  case 
with  Browning,  who,  despite  an  unquenchable  appe- 
tency for  drama,  did  better  work  in  his  dramatic  mon- 


40  BROWNING 

ologues  than  in  his  plays.  The  drama  alone  allowed 
full  scope  for  the  development  of  plot-interest.  But 
it  was  less  favourable  to  another  yet  more  deeply 
rooted  interest  of  his.  Not  only  did  action  and  out- 
ward event — the  stuff  of  drama — interest  Browning 
chiefly  as  u  incidents  in  the  development  of  soul,"  but 
they  became  congenial  to  his  art  only  as  projected 
upon  some  other  mind,  and  tinged  with  its  feeling  and 
its  thought.  Half  the  value  of  a  story  for  him  lay 
in  the  colours  it  derived  from  the  narrator's  personal- 
ity ;  and  he  told  his  own  experience,  as  he  uttered  his 
own  convictions,  most  easily  and  effectively  through 
alien  lips.  For  a  like  reason  he  loved  to  survey  the 
slow  continuities  of  actual  events  from  the  standpoint 
of  a  given  moment,  under  the  conditions  of  perspec- 
tive and  illusion  which  it  imposed.  Both  these  con- 
ditions were  less  well  satisfied  by  drama,  which 
directly  "  imitates  action,"  than  by  the  dramatic 
speech  or  monologue,  which  imitates  action  as  focussed 
in  a  particular  mind.  And  Browning's  dramatic 
genius  found  its  most  natural  and  effective  outlet  in 
the  wealth  of  implicit  drama  which  he  concentrated 
in  these  salient  moments  tense  with  memory  and 
hope.  The  insuppressible  alertness  and  enterprise  of 
his  own  mind  tells  upon  his  portrayal  of  these  intense 
moments.  He  sees  passion  not  as  a  blinding  fume, 
but  as  a  flame,  which  enlarges  the  area,  and  quickens 
the  acuteness,  of  vision  ;  the  background  grows  alive 
with  moving  shapes./  To  the  stricken  girl  in  Ye 
Banks  and  Braes  memory  is  torture,  and  she  thrusts 
convulsively  from  her,  like  dagger-points,  the  intolera- 


MATURING    METHODS  4 1 

ble  loveliness  of  the  things  that  remind  her  of  her 
love ;  whereas  the  victim  of  The  Confessional  pours 
forth  from  her  frenzied  lips  every  detail  of  her  tragic 
story. 

So  in  The  Laboratory,  once  more,  all  the  strands  of 
the  implicit  drama  are  seen  like  incandescent  filaments 
in  the  glow  of  a  single  moment  of  fierce  impassioned 
consciousness : 

"  He  is  with  her,  and  they  know  that  I  know 

Where  they  are,  what  they  do :  they  believe  my  tears  flow 
While  they  laugh,  laugh  at  me,  at  me  fled  to  the  drear         , 
Empty  church,  to  pray  God  in,  for  them ! — I  am  here." 

Both  kinds — drama  and  dramatic  lyric — continued  to 
attract  him,  while  neither  altogether  satisfied;  and 
they  engaged  him  concurrently  throughout  the  decade. 
In  this  power  of  seizing  the  salient  moment  of  a 
complex  situation  and  laying  bare  at  a  stroke  all  its 
issues,  Browning's  monologues  have  no  nearer  paral- 
lel than  the  Imaginary  Conversations  of  Landor,  which 
illuminate  with  so  strange  a  splendour  so  many  un- 
recorded scenes  of  the  great  drama  of  history.  To 
Landor,  according  to  his  wife's  testimony,  Browning 
"  always  said  that  he  owed  more  than  to  any  contem- 
porary "  j  to  Landor  he  dedicated  the  last  volume  of 
the  Bells  and  Pomegranates.  Landor,  on  his  part, 
hailed  in  Browning  the  "  inquiring  eye  "  and  varied 
discourse  of  a  second  Chaucer.  It  is  hardly  rash  to 
connect  with  his  admiration  for  the  elder  artist  Brown- 
ing's predilection  for  these  brief  revealing  glimpses 
into  the   past.     Browning   cared  less  for  the  actual 


42  BROWNING 

personnel  of  history,  and  often  imagined  his  speakers 
as  well  as  their  talk ;  but  he  imagined  them  with  an 
equal  instinct  for  seizing  the  expressive  traits  of  na- 
tionalities and  of  times,  and  a  similar,  if  more  spon- 
taneous and  naive,  anti-feudal  temper.  The  French 
camp  and  the  Spanish  cloister,  Gismond  and  My  Last 
Duchess  (originally  called  France  and  Italy),  are  pene- 
trated with  the  spirit  of  peoples,  ages,  and  institutions 
as  seized  by  a  historical  student  of  brilliant  imagina- 
tion and  pronounced  antipathies. 

But  in  one  point  Landor  and  Browning  stood  at 
opposite  poles.  Landor,  far  beyond  any  contemporary 
English  example,  had  the  classic  sense  and  mastery  of 
style  j  Browning's  individuality  of  manner  rested  on  a 
robust  indifference  to  all  the  traditional  conventions 
of  poetic  speech.  The  wave  of  realism  which  swept 
over  English  letters  in  the  early  'Forties  broke  down 
many  barriers  of  language ;  the  new  things  that  had 
to  be  said  demanded  new  ways  of  saying  them ; 
homely,  grotesque,  or  sordid  life  was  rendered  in 
sordid,  grotesque,  and  homely  terms.  Pickwick  in 
1837  had  established  the  immense  vogue  of  Dickens, 
the  Heroes  in  1840  had  assured  the  imposing  prestige 
of  Carlyle;  and  the  example  of  both  made  for  the 
freest  and  boldest  use  of  language.  Across  the  Chan- 
nel the  stupendous  fabric  of  the  Comedie  Humaine  was 
approaching  completion,  and  Browning  was  one  of 
Balzac's  keenest  English  readers.  Alone  among  the 
greater  poets  of  the  time  Browning  was  in  genius 
and  temperament  a  true  kinsman  to  these  great  ro- 
mantic realists ;  his  poetry,  as  it  emerged  in  the  rich 


MATURING    METHODS 


43 


dramatic  harvest  of  the  'Forties,  is  the  nearest  coun- 
terpart and  analogue  of  their  prose. 

I 

Browning's  first  drama,  as  is  well  known,  was  the 
result  of  a  direct  application  from  Macready.  Intro- 
duced in  November,  1835,  by  his  "literary  father" 
Fox,  Browning  immediately  interested  the  actor.  A 
reading  of  Paracelsus  convinced  him  that  Browning 
could  write,  if  not  a  good  play,  yet  one  with  an 
effective  tragic  role  for  himself.  Strained  relations 
with  his  company  presently  made  him  eager  to  pro- 
cure this  service.  Browning,  suddenly  appealed  to 
(in  May,  1836),  promptly  suggested  Strafford.  He 
was  full  of  the  subject,  having  recently  assisted  his 
friend  Forster  in  compiling  his  life.  The  actor  closed 
with  the  suggestion,  and  a  year  later  (May  1,  1837) 
the  play  was  performed  at  Covent  Garden.  The  fine 
acting  of  Macready,  and  of  Helen  Faucit,  who  was 
now  associated  with  him,  procured  the  piece  a  mod- 
erate success.     It  went  through  five  performances. 

Browning's  Strafford,  like  his  Paracelsus,  was  a 
serious  attempt  to  interpret  a  historic  character;  and 
historic  experts  like  Gardiner  have,  as  regards  the 
central  figure,  emphatically  indorsed  his  judgment. 
The  other  persons,  and  the  action  itself,  he  treated 
more  freely,  with  evident  regard  to  their  value  as 
secondary  elements  in  the  portrayal  of  Strafford ;  and 
it  is  easy  to  trace  in  the  whole  manner  of  his  innova- 
tions the  well-marked  ply  of  his  mind.  The  harsh 
and  rugged  fanaticisms,  the  splendid  frivolities,  of  the 


44  BROWNING 

seventeenth  century,  fade  and  lose  substance  in  an 
atmosphere  charged  with  idealism  and  self-conscious- 
ness. Generous  self-devotion  is  not  the  universal 
note,  but  it  is  the  prevailing  key,  that  in  which  the 
writer  most  naturally  thinks  and  most  readily  invents. 
Strafford's  devotion  to  Charles  and  Pym's  to  his 
country  were  historical ;  but  Browning  accentuates 
Pym's  heroism  by  making  the  man  he  sends  to  the 
scaffold  his  old  friend ;  and  devotion  is  the  single  trait 
of  the  beautiful  but  imaginary  character  of  Lucy 
Carlisle.  "  Give  me  your  notion  of  a  thorough  self- 
devotement,  self-forgetting,"  he  wrote  a  few  years 
later  to  Miss  Flower:  the  idea  seems  to  have  been 
already  busy  moulding  his  still  embryonic  invention 
of  character.  Something  of  the  visionary  exaltation 
of  the  dying  Paracelsus  thus  hangs  over  the  final 
scene  in  which  Strafford  goes  to  meet  the  fate  which 
the  one  friend  imposes  on  him  and  the  other  cannot 
turn  aside.  All  the  characters  have  something  of  the 
u  deep  self-consciousness  "  of  the  author  of  Pauline. 
Not  that  they  are,  any  of  them,  drawn  with  very 
profound  grasp  of  human  nature  or  a  many-sided 
apprehension  of  life.  They  are  either  absolutely 
simple,  like  Lady  Carlisle,  or  built  upon  a  rivalry  or 
conflict  of  simple  elements,  like  Strafford  and  Charles ; 
but  there  is  so  much  restless  vivacity  in  their  dis- 
course, the  broad  surface  of  mood  is  so  incessantly 
agitated  by  the  play  and  cross-play  of  thought  and 
feeling,  that  they  seem  more  complex  than  they  are. 

Though  played  for  only  five  nights,  Strafford  had 
won  a  success  which  might  well  have  dazzled  a  young 


MATURING    METHODS  45 

and  untried  aspirant,  and  which  was  sufficiently  im- 
pressive to  shrewd  men  of  business  like  Messrs. 
Longman  to  induce  them  to  undertake  its  publication 
free  of  cost.  It  appeared  in  April,  with  an  interest- 
ing preface,  subsequently  withdrawn,  from  which  a 
significant  sentence  has  already  been  quoted.  The 
composition  of  Strafford  had  not  only  "  freshened  a 
jaded  mind  "  but  permanently  quickened  his  zest  for 
the  drama  of  political  crises.  New  projects  for  his- 
torical dramas  chased  and  jostled  one  another  through 
his  busy  brain,  which  seems  to  have  always  worked 
most  prosperously  in  a  highly  charged  atmosphere.  I 
am  going  "  to  begin  .  .  .  thinking  a  Tragedy," 
he  wrote  characteristically  to  Miss  Haworth — "(an 
Historical  one,  so  I  shall  want  heaps  of  criticisms  on 
Strafford)^  and  I  want  to  have  another  tragedy  in 
prospect ;  I  write  best  so  provided."  1 

The  "  Historical  Tragedies "  here  foreshadowed, 
King  Victor  and  King  Charles  and  The  Return  of  the 
Druses,  were  eventually  published  as  the  Second  and 
Fourth  of  the  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  in  1842-43. 
How  little  Browning  cared  for  history  except  as  a 
quarry  for  psychical  problems,  how  little  concern  he 
had  at  bottom  with  the  changing  drama  of  national 
life,  is  clear  from  the  directions  in  which  he  now 
sought  his  good.  In  Strafford  as  in  Paracelsus,  and 
even  in  Sordello,  the  subject  had  made  some  appeal  to 
the  interest  in  great  epochs  and  famous  men.  Hence- 
forth his  attitude,  as  a  dramatist,  to  history  is  a  curi- 
ous blend  of  the  historical  specialist  who  explores  the 
1  Orr,  Life,  p.  103. 


46  BROWNING 

recondite  byways  of  history,  and  the  romantic  poet 
who  abandons  actuality  altogether.  He  seeks  his 
heroes  in  remote  sequestered  corners  of  the  world, — 
Sardinia,  Juliers,  Lebanon ;  but  actual  historic  re- 
search gradually  yields  ground  to  a  free  invention 
which,  however,  always  simulates  historic  truth. 
King  Victor  and  King  Charles  contains  far  less  poetry 
than  Paracelsus,  but  it  was  the  fruit  of  historic  studies 
no  less  severe.  There  was  material  for  genuine 
tragedy  in  the  story.  The  old  king,  who  after  fifty 
years  of  despotic  rule  shifts  the  crown  to  the  head  of 
his  son  with  the  intention  of  still  pulling  the  wires 
behind  the  scenes,  but,  finding  that  Charles  means  to 
rule  as  well  as  reign,  clutches  angrily  at  his  surren- 
dered crown, — this  King  Victor  has  something  in 
him  of  Lear,  something  of  the  dying  Henry  IV.  But 
history  provided  more  sober  issues,  and  Browning's 
temperament  habitually  inclined  him  to  stave  off  the 
violence  of  tragic  passion  which  disturbs  the  subtle 
eddyings  of  thought  and  feeling.  Charles  is  no 
Regan,  hardly  even  an  Albany,  no.  weakling  either, 
but  a  man  of  sensitive  conscience J;:  who  shifts  and 
gyrates  responsively  to  the  complex  play  of  motive 
which  Browning  brings  to  bear  upon  him.  Reluc- 
tantly he  orders  Victor's  arrest,  and  when  the  old 
man,  baffled  and  exasperated,  is  brought  before  him 
and  imperiously  demands  the  crown,  he  puts  it  upon 
his  father's  head.  Neither  character  is  drawn  with 
the  power  of  Strafford,  but  the  play  is  largely  built 
upon  the  same  contrasts  between  personal  devotion 
and   political  expediency,  the  untutored  idealism  of 


MATURING    METHODS 


47 


youth  and  the  ruses  or  rigidity  of  age.  This  was  a 
type  of  dramatic  action  which  Browning  imagined 
with  peculiar  power  and  insight,  for  it  bodied  forth  a 
contrast  between  contending  elements  of  his  own 
nature.  Towards  this  type  all  his  drama  tended  to 
gravitate. /in  The  Return  of  the  Druses  Browning's 
native  bent  can  be  more  freely  studied,  for  history  has 
contributed  only  the  general  situation.  His  turn  for 
curious  and  far-fetched  incident  is  nowhere  better 
illustrated  than  in  this  tangled  intrigue  carried  on 
between  Frankish  Hospitallers,  Venetians,  and  Druses 
of  Lebanon  in  a  lonely  island  of  the  iEgean  where 
none  of  the  three  are  at  home.  A  political  revolu- 
tion—the revolt  of  the  Druses  against  their  Frankish 
lords — provides  the  outer  momentum  of  the  action ; 
but  the  central  interest  is  concentrated  upon  a  "  Soul's 
tragedy,"  in  which  the  conflict  of  races  goes  on 
within  the  perplexed  and  paralysed  bosom  of  a  single 
man.  Djabal,  the  Druse  patriot  brought  up  in  Brit- 
tany, analyses  his^>wn  character  with  the  merciless 
self-consciousnes^Bk  Browning  himself : 


rrank  do 


"  I  with  m^^H)  instinct — thwarted  ever 
By  my  Frank  policy,  and  with  in  turn 
My  Frank  brain  thwarted  by  my  Arab  heart  — 
While  these  remained  in  equipoise,  I  lived  — 
Nothing ;  had  either  been  predominant,  > 

As  a  Frank  schemer  or  an  Arab  mystic 
I  had  been  something." 

The  conflict  between  policy  and  devotion  is  now 
transferred  to  the  arena  of  a  single  breast,  where  its 
nature  is  somewhat  too  clearly  understood  and  formu- 


Z^ 


48  BROWNING 

lated.  The  "  Frank  schemer  "  conceives  the  plan  of 
turning  the  Druse  superstition  to  account  by  posing 
as  an  incarnation  of  their  Founder.  But  the  "  Arab 
mystic  "  is  too  near  sharing  the  belief  to  act  his  part 
with  ease,  and  while  he  is  still  paltering  the  devoted 
Anael  slays  the  Prefect.  The  play  is  thenceforth  oc- 
cupied, ostensibly,  with  the  efforts  of  the  Christian 
authorities  to  discover  and  punish  the  murderers.  Its 
real  subject  is  the  subtle  changes  wrought  in  Djabal 
and  Anael  by  their  gradual  transition  from  the  relation 
of  prophet  and  devotee  to  that  of  lovers.  Her  pas- 
sion, even  before  he  comes  to  share  it,  has  begun  to 
sap  the  security  of  his  false  pretensions :  he  longs, 
not  at  first  to  disavow  them,  but  to  make  them  true  : 
he  will  be  the  prophetic  helper  of  his  people  in  very 
deed.  To  the  outer  world  he  maintains  his  claim 
with  undiminished  boldness  and  complete  success; 
but  the  inner  supports  are  gradually  giving  way,  Arab 
mystic  and  Frank  schemer  lose  their  hold,  and 

"  A  third  and  better  nature^^^s  up, 
My  mere  man's  nature.'! 


"p 


Anael,  a  simpler  character  than  ai^previous  woman 
of  the  plays,  thus  has  a  more  significant  function. 
Lady  Carlisle  fumbles  blindly  with  the  dramatic  issues 
without  essentially  afFecting  them ;  Polyxena  furthers 
them  with  loyal  counsel,  but  is  not  their  main  execu- 
tant. Anael,  in  her  fervid  devotion,  not  only  precipi- 
tates the  catastrophe,  but  emancipates  her  lover  from 
the  thraldom  of  his  lower  nature.  In  her  Browning 
for  the  first  time  in  drama  represented  the  purifying 


MATURING    METHODS  49 

power  of  Love.  /The  transformations  of  soul  by  soul 
were  already  beginning  to  occupy  Browning's  imagi- 
nation. The  poet  of  Cristina  and  Saul  was  already 
foreshadowed.  But  nothing  as  yet  foreshadowed  the 
kind  of  spiritual  influence  there  portrayed — that 
which,  instead  of  making  its  way  through  the  impact 
of  character  upon  character,  passion  upon  passion,  is 
communicated  through  an  unconscious  glance  or  a 
song.  For  one  who  believed  as  fixedly  as  Browning 
in  the  power  of  these  moments  to  change  the  prevail- 
ing bias  of  character  and  conduct,  such  a  conception 
was  full  of  implicit  drama.  A  chance  inspiration  led 
him  to  attempt  to  show  how  a  lyric  soul  flinging  its 
soul-seed  unconsciously  forth  in  song  might  become 
the  involuntary  deus  ex  machina  in  the  tangle  of  pas- 
sion and  plot  through  which  she  moved,  resolving  its 
problems  and  averting  its  catastrophes. 

The  result  was  a  poem  which  Elizabeth  Barrett 
"  could  find  it  in  her  heart  to  envy  "  its  author,  which 
Browning  himself  (in  1845)  liked  better  than  any- 
thing else  he  had  yet  done.1  It  has  won  a  not  less 
secure  place  in  the  affections  of  all  who  care  for 
Browning  at  all.  It  was  while  walking  alone  in  a 
wood  near  Dulwich,  we  are  told  by  Mrs.  Orr,  that 
"  the  idea  flashed  upon  him  of  some  one  walking  thus 
through  life;  one  apparently  too  obscure  to  leave  a 
trace  of  his  or  her  passage,  yet  exercising  a  lasting 
though  unconscious  influence  at  every  step  of  it ;  and 
the  image  shaped  itself  into  the  little  silk-winder  of 
Asolo."  2  The  most  important  effect  of  this  design 
1  Letters  of  R.  and  E.  B.  B.,  i.  28.  3  Orr,  Handbook,  p.  55. 


50  BROWNING 

was  to  call  out  Browning's  considerable  powers  of 
rendering  those  gross,  lurid,  unspiritualised  elements 
of  the  human  drama  upon  which  Pippa  was  to  flash 
her  transforming  spell.  His  somewhat  burly  jocosity 
had  expatiated  freely  in  letters ;  but  he  had  done  noth- 
ing which,  like  the  cynical  chaff  of  his  art  students, 
suggests  the  not  unskilful  follower  of  Balzac  and 
Dickens.  And  he  had  given  no  hint  of  the  elemental 
tragic  power  shown  in  the  great  Ottima  and  Sebald 
scene,  nor  of  the  fierce  and  cruel  sensuality,  the  mag- 
nificence in  sin,  of  Ottima  herself. 

Pippa  Passes,  the  most  romantic  in  conception  of  all 
Browning's  plays,  thus  first  disclosed  his  genius  for 
realism.  Strafford,  King  Victor,  The  Druses  are 
couched  in  the  tempered  ideality  of  blank  verse ;  here 
we  pass  to  and  fro  from  the  airiest  lyric  to  the  most 
massive  and  sinewy  prose.  It  counted  for  something, 
too,  that  Italy,  and  above  all  the  little  hill-town  in 
which  the  scene  was  laid,  was  a  vivid  personal  mem- 
ory, not  a  vague  region  of  fancy  like  rjis.JSardinia  or 
Lebanon.  Asolo,  with  its  walls  and  turret,  its 
bishop's  palace  and  duomo,  and  girls  sitting  on  the 
steps,  its  upland  farms  among  the  cherry  orchards,  its 
beetles  sparkling  along  the  dust,  its  "warm  slow  yel- 
low moonlit  nights  "  of  May,  and  "  glaring  jjomps  " 
of  June, — Asolo,  with  its  legend  of  "  Kate  the 
queen  ''  and  her  carollingpage,  lives  as  few  other 
spots  do  for  Browning's  readers.  Pippa  herself,  in 
her  exquisite  detachment  from  the  sordid  humanity 
amid  which  she  moves,  might  have  appeared  too  like 
a  visionary  presence,  not  of  earth  though  on  it,  had 


MATURING    METHODS  5 1 

she  not  been  brought  into  touch,  at  so  many  points, 
with  things  that  Browning  had  seen»  Pippa  Passes 
has,  among  Browning's  dramas,  the  same  kind  of  pe- 
culiar interest  which  belongs  to  the  Tempest  and  to 
Faust  among  Shakespeare's  and  Qoethe's.  Faery  and 
devilry  were  not  Browning's  affairs ;  but,  within  the 
limits  of  his  resolute  humanism,  Pippa  Passes  is  an 
ideal  construction,  shadowing  forth,  under  the  sem- 
blance of  a  single  definite  bit  of  life,  the  controlling 
elements,  as  Browning  imagined  them,  in  all  life. 
For  Browning,  too,  the  world  teemed  with  Stephanos 
and  Trinculos,  Sebastians  and  Antonios  ;  it  was,  none 
the  less,  a  magical  Isle,  where  strange  catastrophes 
and  unsuspected  revolutions  sprang  suddenly  into  be- 
ing at  the  unseen  carol  of  Ariel  as  he  passed.  Brown- 
ing's Ariel  is  the  organ  of  a  spiritual  power  which, 
unlike  Prospero,  seeks  not  merely  to  detect  and  avert 
crime,  or  merely  to  dismiss  the  would-be  criminal, 
forgiven,  to  u  live  and  deal  with  others  better,"  but  to 
renovate  character;  to  release  men  from  the  bondage 
of  their  egoisms  by  those  influences,  slight  as  a  flower- 
bell  or  a  sunset  touch,  which  renew  us  by  setting  all 
our  aims  and  desires  in  a  new  proportion. 

II 

Browning's  first  four  plays  seemed  to  mark  a  grow- 
ing neglect  of  the  requirements  and  traditions  of  the 
stage.  He  might  even  appear  to  have  renounced  the 
stage  altogether  when  in  184.1  he  arranged  with 
Moxon  to  publish  his  writings  in  a  cheap  pamphlet 
form.     The  first  number  of  Bells  and  Pomegranates 


52  BROWNING 

contained  the  least  theatrical  of  his  dramas,  Pippa 
Passes.  "  Two  or  three  years  ago "  he  declared  in 
the  preface  (not  reprinted),  u  I  wrote  a  play,  about 
which  the  chief  matter  I  much  care  to  recollect  at 
present  is  that  a  Pit-full  of  good-natured  people  ap- 
plauded it.  Ever  since  I  have  been  desirous  of  doing 
something  in  the  same  way  that  should  better  reward 
their  attention.  What  follows  I  mean  for  the  first  of 
a  series  of  Dramatical  Pieces,  to  come  out  at  inter- 
vals j  and  I  amuse  myself  by  fancying  that  the  cheap 
mode  in  which  they  appear  will  for  once  help  me  to 
a  sort  of  Pit-audience  again." 

But  Browning's  ambition  for  fame  as  a  maker  of 
plays  was  still  keen,  and  nothing  but  a  renewed  invi- 
tation to  write  for  the  stage  was  needed  to  lure  him 
back  into  tentative  compliance  with  its  ways.  In  the 
course  of  1841  Macready  intervened  with  a  request 
for  another  play  from  the  author  of  Strafford.1 
Thereupon  Browning  produced  with  great  rapidity  A 
Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon.  After  prolonged  and  some- 
what sordid  green-room  vicissitudes,  it  was  performed 
on  Feb.  11,  1843.  Macready,  its  first  begetter,  did 
his  best  to  wreck  it ;  the  majority  of  the  players  re- 
fused to  understand  their  parts  ;  but  through  the  fine 
acting  of  Helen  Faucit  (Mildred)  and  Phelps  (Lord 
Tresham),  it  achieved  a  moderate  but  brief  success. 

The  choice  of  subject  indicates,  as  has  been  said,  a 

desire  to  make  terms  with  stage  tradition.     But  the 

ordinary  theatre-goer,  who  went  expecting  to  witness 

what  the  title  appeared  to  promise,  found  himself,  as 

1  The  date  is  fixed  by  Browning's  statement  (Orr,  p.  119). 


MATURING    METHODS 


53 


the  play  proceeded,  perplexed  and  out  of  his  bearings. 
An  English  nobleman,  with  the  deep-engrained  family 
pride  of  his  order,  had  suffered,  or  was  to  suffer,  dis- 
honour. But  this  seemingly  commonplace  motif  was 
developed  in  a  strange  and  unfamiliar  ethical  atmos- 
phere— an  atmosphere  of  moral  ideas  which  seemed  to 
embrace  both  those  who  upheld  the  feudal  honour  and 
those  who  "  blotted  "  it ;  to  hint  at  a  purity  deeper 
than  sin.  In  a  more  sinister  sense  than  Colombes 
Birthday,  this  play  might  have  been  prefaced  by  the 
beautiful  motto  of  its  successor :  — 

"  Ivy  and  violet,  what  do  ye  here 
With  blossom  and  shoot  in  the  warm  spring  weather 
Hiding  the  arms  of  Montecchi  and  Vere  ?  ' ' 

The  love  of  Mildred  and  Mertoun,  which  blots  the 
Tresham  'scutcheon,  is  in  origin  as  innocent  as  that 
which  breaks  into  flower  across  the  royal  ambitions  of 
Colombe  ;  and  their  childlike  purity  of  passion  be- 
comes, in  spite  of  the  wrong  to  which  it  has  led  them, 
the  reconciling  fact  upon  which  at  the  close  all  ani- 
mosities and  resentments  die  away.  The  conception 
is  genuinely  tragic,  for  the  doom  which  descends  upon 
them  all  is  a  Nemesis  which  they  have  all  contributed 
to  provoke,  but  which  none  of  them  deserves  ;  and 
which  precisely  the  blended  nobility  and  naivete  of 
Mildred  and  Mertoun  prevents  from  passing  by  them 
altogether.  More  mature  or  less  sensitive  lovers 
would  have  found  an  issue  from  the  situation  as  easily 
as  an  ordinary  Hamlet  from  his  task  of  vengeance. 
But  Mertoun  and  Mildred  are  at  once  too  timid  and 


54 


BROWNING 


too  audacious,  too  tremulous  in  their  consciousness  of 
guilt,  too  hardy  and  reckless  in  their  mutual  devotion, 
to  carry  through  so  difficult  a  game.  Mertoun  falters 
and  stammers  in  his  suit  to  Tresham  ;  Mildred  stands 
mute  at  her  brother's  charge,  incapable  of  evasion, 
only  resolute  not  to  betray.  Yet  these  same  two  chil- 
dren in  the  arts  of  politic  self-defence  are  found  reck- 
lessly courting  the  peril  of  midnight  meetings  in  Mil- 
dred's chamber  with  the  aid  of  all  the  approved 
resources  and  ruses  of  romance — the  disguise,  the 
convenient  tree,  the  signal  set  in  the  window,  the 
lover's  serenade.  And  when  the  lover,  who  dared  all 
risks  to  his  lady  and  to  himself  for  a  stolen  interview 
with  her  night  by  night,  finally  encounters  Tresham, 
he  is  instantly  paralysed,  and  will  not  even  lift  a 
sword  in  his  own  defence.  Upon  this  union  of 
boundless  daring  for  one  another's  sake  and  sensibility 
to  the  shame  of  having  wronged  the  house  and  blotted 
the  'scutcheon  Mertoun's  fate  hangs,  and  with  his 
Mildred's,  and  with  hers  Tresham's. 

Beside  the  tragedy  and  the  stain  of  the  love  of 
Mertoun  and  Mildred,  Browning  characteristically 
sets  the  calm,  immaculate,  cousinly  affection  of  Gwen- 
dolen and  Austin.  One  has  a  glimpse  here  of  his 
habitual  criticism  of  all  satisfied  attainment,  of  all 
easy  completeness  on  a  low  plane.  It  is  Gwendolen 
herself  who  half  disarms  that  criticism,  or  makes  it, 
as  applied  to  her,  more  pathetic  than  trenchant  by  in- 
stantly detecting  and  proclaiming  the  different  quality 
of  Mertoun's  love.  "  Mark  him,  Austin  :  that's  true 
love  !     Ours  must  begin  again."    «In  Tresham  Brown- 


MATURING    METHODS  55 

ing  seems  to  have  designed  to  portray  the  finest  type 
of  ancestral  pride.  He  is  "  proud  "  of  his  u  inter- 
minable line,"  because  the  men  were  all  u  paladins  " 
and  the  women  all  of  flawless  honour ;  and  he  has 
the  chivalrous  tenderness  of  ideal  knighthood,  as  well 
as  its  honourable  pride.  When  Mertoun  has  received 
his  death-stroke  and  told  his  story,  the  tenderness 
comes  out ;  the  sullied  image  of  his  passionately  loved 
sister  not  only  recovers  its  appeal,  but  rises  up  before 
him  in  mute  intolerable  reproach;  and  Mildred  has 
scarcely  breathed  her  last  in  his  arms  when  Tresham 
succumbs  to  the  poison  he  has  taken  in  remorse  for 
his  hasty  act.  It  is  unlucky  that  this  tragic  climax, 
finely  conceived  as  it  is,  is  marred  by  the  unconscious 
burlesque  of  his  "  Ah, — I  had  forgotten  :  I  am  dying." 
In  such  things  one  feels  Browning's  want  of  the 
unerring  sureness  of  a  great  dramatist  at  the  crucial 
moments  of  action. 

Although  not  brilliantly  successful  on  the  boards,  A 
Blot  in  the  ' 'Scutcheon  made  a  deep  impression  upon 
the  more  competent  part  of  the  audience.  For 
Browning  himself  the  most  definite  result  was  that 
Macready  passed  out  of  his  life — for  twenty  years 
they  never  met — and  that  his  most  effective  link  with 
the  stage  was  thus  finally  severed.  But  his  more  dis- 
tant and  casual  relations  with  it  were  partly  balanced 
by  the  much  enlarged  understanding  of  dramatic  effect 
which  he  had  by  this  time  won ;  and  J  Blot  in  the 
'Scutcheon  was  followed  by  a  drama  which  attains  a 
beauty  and  charm  not  far  below  that  of  Pippa  Passes 
under  the  conditions  of  a  regular  dramatic  plot.     The 


56  BROWNING 

ostensible  subject  of  Colombe's  Birthday  is  a  political 
crisis  on  the  familiar  lines ; — an  imperilled  throne  in 
the  centre  of  interest,  a  background  of  vague  op- 
pression and  revolt.  But  as  compared  with  King 
Victor  or  The  Druses  the  dispute  is  harmless,  the 
tumult  of  revolution  easily  overheard.  The  diplo- 
matic business  is  not  etherealised  into  romance,  like 
the  ladies'  embassy  in  Love's  Labour's  Lost;  but 
neither  is  it  allowed  to  become  grave  or  menacing. 
Berthold's  arrival  to  present  his  claim  to  the  govern- 
ment of  this  miniature  state  affects  us  somewhat  like 
the  appearance  of  a  new  and  formidable  player  in 
some  drawing-room  diversion  ;  and  the  "  treason  " 
of  the  courtiers  like  the  "  unfairness"  of  children  at 
play.  Nevertheless,  the  victory  of  love  over  political 
interest  which  the  motto  foreshadows  is  not  accom- 
plished without  those  subtle  fluctuations  and  sur- 
prises which  habitually  mark  the  conduct  of  Brown- 
ing's plots.  The  alternative  issues  gain  in  seriousness 
and  ideality  as  we  proceed,  and  Browning  has  nowhere 
expressed  the  ideal  of  sovereignty  more  finely  than  it 
is  expressed  in  this  play,  by  the  man  for  whose  sake  a 
sovereign  is  about  to  surrender  her  crown.1  Colombe 
herself  is  one  of  Browning's  most  gracious  and  win- 
ning figures.  She  brings  the  ripe  decision  of  woman- 
hood to  bear  upon  a  series  of  difficult  situations 
without  losing  the  bright  glamour  of  her  youth.     Her 

1  This  fine  speech  of  Valence  to  the  greater  glory  of  his  rival 
(Act  iv.)  is  almost  too  subtle  for  the  stage.  Browning  with  good 
reason  directed  its  omission  unless  "  a  very  good  Valence  "  could 
be  found. 


MATURING    METHODS  57 

inborn  truth  and  nature  draw  her  on  as  by  a  quiet 
momentum,  and  gradually  liberate  her  from  the  sway 
of  the  hollow  fictions  among  which  her  lot  is  cast. 
Valence,  the  outward  instrument  of  this  liberation,  is 
not  the  least  noble  of  that  line  of  chivalrous  lovers 
which  reaches  from  Gismond  to  Caponsacchi.  With 
great  delicacy  the  steps  are  marked  in  this  inward  and 
spiritual  "  flight  "  of  Colombe.  Valence's  "  way  of 
love  "  is  to  make  her  realise  the  glory  and  privileges 
of  the  rulership  which  places  her  beyond  his  reach, 
at  the  very  moment  when  she  is  about  to  resign  it 
in  despair.  She  discovers  the  needs  of  the  woman 
and  the  possibilities  of  power  at  the  same  time,  and 
thus  is  brought,  by  Valence's  means,  to  a  mood  in 
which  Prince  Berthold's  offer  of  his  hand  and  crown 
together  weighs  formidably,  for  a  moment,  against 
Valence's  offer  of  his  love  alone,  until  she  discovers 
that  Berthold  is  the  very  personation,  in  love  and  in 
statecraft  alike,  of  the  fictions  from  which  she  had 
escaped.  Then,  swiftly  recovering  herself,  she  sets 
foot  finally  on  the  firm  ground  where  she  had  first 
sought  her  u  true  resource." 

Berthold,  like  Blougram,  Ogniben,  and  many  an- 
other of  Browning's  mundane  personages,  is  a  subtler 
piece  of  psychology  than  men  of  the  type  of  Valence, 
in  whom  his  own  idealism  flows  freely  forth.  He 
comes  before  us  with  a  weary  nonchalance  admirably 
contrasted  with  the  fiery  intensity  of  Valence.  He 
means  to  be  emperor  one  day,  and  his  whole  life  is  a 
process  of  which  that  is  to  be  the  product ;  but  he 
finds    the    process    unaffectedly    boring.      Without 


58  BROWNING 

relaxing  a  whit  in  the  mechanical  pursuit  of  his  end, 
he  views  life  with  much  mental  detachment,  and 
shows  a  cool  and  not  unsympathetic  observation  of 
men  who  pursue  other  ideals,  as  well  as  an  abundance 
of  critical  irony  towards  those  who  apparently  share 
his  own.  An  adept  in  courtly  arts,  and  owing  all  his 
successes  to  courtly  favour,  he  meets  the  assiduities 
of  other  courtiers  with  open  contempt.  His  ends 
are  those  of  Laertes  or  Fortinbras,  and  he  is  quite 
capable  of  the  methods  of  Rosencrantz  and  Guilden- 
stern ;  but  he  regards  ends  and  methods  alike  with 
the  sated  distaste  of  Hamlet.  By  birth  and  principle 
a  man  of  action,  he  has,  even  more  than  most  of 
Browning's  men  of  action,  the  curious  introspective- 
ness  of  the  philosophic  onlooker.  He  "watches 
his  mind,"  and  if  he  does  not  escape  illusions, 
recognises  and  exposes  them  with  ironical  candour. 
Few  of  Browning's  less  right-minded  persons  attain 
final  insight  at  less  cost  to  dramatic  propriety  than 
Berthold  when  he  pronounces  his  final  verdict : — 

"  All  is  for  the  best. 
Too  costly  a  flower  were  this,  I  see  it  now, 
To  pluck  and  set  upon  my  barren  helm 
To  wither, — any  garish  plume  will  do." 

Colombe's  Birthday  was  published  in  1844  as  No.  6 
of  the  Bells,  but  had  for  the  present  no  prospect  of 
the  stage.  Nine  years  later,  however,  the  loyal 
Phelps,  who  had  so  doughtily  come  to  the  rescue 
of  its  predecessor,  put  it  successfully  on  the  boards 
of  his  theatre  at  Sadler's  Wells. 


MATURING    METHODS  59 

The  most  buoyant  of  optimists  has  moments  of  self- 
mockery,  and  the  hardiest  believer  in  ideal  truth  moods 
in  which  poetry  seems  the  phantom  and  prose  the  fact. 
Such  a  mood  had  its  share  in  colouring  the  dramatic 
sketch  which,  it  is  now  pretty  evident,  Browning  wrote 
not  long  after  finishing  Colombes  Birthday}  That  play 
is  a  beautiful  triumph  of  poetry  over  prose,  of  soul  and 
heart  over  calculation  and  business.  A  Soul's  Tragedy 
exhibits  the  inverse  process  :  the  triumph  of  mundane 
policy  and  genial  savoir  faire  in  the  person  of  Ogniben 
over  the  sickly  and  equivocal  "  poetry  "  of  Chiappino. 
Browning  seems  to  have  thrown  ofF  this  bitter  parody 
of  his  own  idealisms  in  a  mood  like  that  in  which  Ibsen 
conceived  the  poor  blundering  idealist  of  the  Wild 
Duck.  Chiappino  is  Browning's  Werle  ;  the  reverse 
side  of  a  type  which  he  had  drawn  with  so  much  in- 
dulgence in  the  Luigi  of  Pippa  Passes.  Plainly,  it  was 
a  passing  mood ;  as  plainly,  a  mood  which,  from  the 
high  and  luminous  vantage-ground  of  1846,  he  could 
look  back  upon  with  regret,  almost  with  scorn.  His 
intercourse  with  Elizabeth  Barrett  was  far  advanced 
before  she  was  at  length  reluctantly  allowed  to  see  it. 
"For  The  Sours  Tragedy,"  he  wrote  (Feb.  11)— 
"  that  will  surprise  you,  I  think.     There  is  no  trace 

1  Browning's  letter  to  Elizabeth  Barrett,  Feb.  13,  1846,  which 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  adequately  noticed.  The  piece  is  ig- 
nored by  Mrs.  Orr.  He  speaks  of  suspending  the  publication  of 
the  "  unlucky  play  "  until  a  second  edition  of  the  Bells — an  "  ap- 
parition "  which  Moxon,  he  says,  seems  to  think  possible ;  and  then 
inserting  it  before  Luria  :  it  will  then  be  "  in  its  place,  for  it  was 
written  two  or  three  years  ago."  In  other  words,  The  SouPs  Tragedy 
was  written  in  1843-44,  between  Colombe's  Birthday  and  Luria. 


60  BROWNING 

of  you  there, — you  have  not  put  out  the  black  face  of 
/'/ — it  is  all  sneering  and  disillusion — and  shall  not  be 
printed  but  burned  if  you  say  the  word."  This  word 
his  correspondent,  needless  to  add,  did  not  say ;  on  the 
contrary,  she  found  it  even  more  impressive  than  its 
successor  Luria.  This  was,  however,  no  tribute  to  its 
stage  qualities ;  for  in  hardly  one  of  his  plays  is  the 
stage  more  openly  ignored.  The  dramatic  form, 
though  still  preserved,  sets  strongly  towards  mono- 
logue ;  the  entire  second  act  foreshadows  unmistakably 
the  great  portrait  studies  of  Men  and  Women;  it 
might  be  called  Ogniben  with  about  as  good  right  as 
they  are  called  Lippo  Lippi  or  Blougram  ;  the  person- 
ality of  the  supple  ecclesiastic  floods  and  takes  posses- 
sion of  the  entire  scene ;  we  see  the  situation  and  the 
persons  through  the  brilliant  ironic  mirror  of  his  mind. 
The  Chiappino  of  the  second  act  is  Ogniben's  Chiap- 
pino,  as  Gigadibs  is  Blougram's  Gigadibs.  His 
u  tragedy  *•  is  one  in  which  there  is  no  room  for  terror 
or  pity,  only  for  contempt.  All  real  stress  of  circum- 
stance is  excluded.  Both  sides  fight  with  blunted 
weapons;  the  revolt  is  like  one  of  those  Florentine 
risings  which  the  Brownings  later  witnessed  with 
amusement  from  the  windows  of  Casa  Guidi,  which 
were  liable  to  postponement  because  of  rain.  The 
prefect  who  is  "  assassinated  "  does  not  die,  and  the 
rebellious  city  is  genially  bantered  into  submission. 
The  u  soul "  of  Chiappino  is,  in  fact,  not  the  stuff*  of 
which  tragedy  is  made.  Even  in  his  instant  acceptance 
of  Luitolfo's  blood-stained  cloak  when  the  pursuers  are, 
as  he  thinks,  at  the  door,  he  seems  to  have  been  casu- 


MATURING    METHODS  6 1 

ally  switched  off  the  proper  lines  of  his  character  into 
a  piece  of  heroism  which  properly  belongs  to  the  man 
he  would  like  to  be  thought,  but  has  not  the  strength 
to  be.  On  the  whole,  Browning's  scorn  must  be 
considered  to  have  injured  his  art.  Tragedy,  in  the 
deepest  sense,  lay  beyond  his  sphere;  and  this  "trag- 
edy "  of  mere  degeneration  and  helpless  collapse  left 
untouched  all  the  springs  from  which  his  poetry  drew 
its  life. 

In  the  autumn  of  1844  Browning  made  a  second 
tour  to  Italy.  It  was  chiefly  memorable  for  his  meet- 
ing, at  Leghorn,  with  Edward  John  Trelawney,  to 
whom  he  carried  a  letter  of  introduction  ; — one  who 
had  not  only  himself  "  seen  Shelley  plain,"  but  has 
contributed  more  than  any  one  else,  save  Hogg,  to 
flash  the  unfading  image  of  what  he  saw  on  the  eyes 
of  posterity.  The  journey  quickened  and  enriched 
his  Italian  memories ;  and  left  many  vivid  traces  in 
the  poetry  of  the  following  year.  Among  these  was 
the  drama  of  Luria,  ultimately  published  as  the  con- 
cluding number  of  the  Bells. 

In  this  remarkable  drama  Browning  turned  once 
more  to  the  type  of  historical  tragedy  which  he  had 
originally  essayed  in  Strafford.  The  fall  of  a  man  of 
passionate  fidelity  through  the  treachery  of  the  prince 
or  the  people  in  whom  he  has  put  his  trust,  was  for 
Browning  one  of  the  most  arresting  of  the  great  tra- 
ditional motives  of  tragic  drama.  He  dwelt  with  em- 
phasis upon  this  aspect  of  the  fate  of  Charles's  great 
minister;  in  Luria,  where  he  was  working  uncon- 
trolled by  historical  authority,  it  is  the  fundamental 


62  BROWNING 

theme.  At  the  same  time  the  effect  is  heightened  by 
those  race  contrasts  which  had  been  so  abundantly 
used  in  The  Return  of  the  Druses.  Luria  is  a  Moor 
who  has  undertaken  the  service  of  Florence,  and  whose 

^religion  it  is  to  serve  her.  Like  Othello,1  he  has  been 
entrusted,  alien  as  he  is,  by  a  jealous  and  exacting 
State,  with  the  supreme  command  of  her  military 
forces,  a  position  in  which  the  fervour  of  the  Oriental 
and  the  frank  simplicity  of  the  soldier  inevitably  lie 
open  to  the  subtle  strategy  of  Italians  and  statesmen. 
"  Luria,"  wrote  Browning,  while  the  whole  scheme 
was  "  all  in  my  brain  yet,  .  .  .  devotes  himself  to 
something  he  thinks  Florence,  and  the  old  fortune  fol- 
lows, .  .  .  and  I  will  soon  loosen  my  Braccio  and 
Puccio  (a  pale  discontented  man)  and  Tiburzio  (the 
Pisan,  good  true  fellow,  this  one),  and  Domizia  the 
lady — loosen  all  these  on  dear  foolish  (ravishing  must 
his  folly  be)  golden-hearted  Luria,  all  these  with  their 
worldly  wisdom  and  Tuscan  shrewd  ways."  Florence, 
in  short,  plays  collectively  somewhat  the  part  of  Iago 
to  this  second  Othello,  but  of  an  Iago  (need  it  be  said) 
immeasurably    less    deeply  rooted    in   malignity  than 

/  Shakespeare's.  It  was  a  source  of  weakness  as  well 
as  of  strength  in  Browning  as  a  dramatist  that  the 
evil  things  in  men  dissolve  so  readily  under  his 
scrutiny  as  if  they  were  mere  shells  of  flimsy  disguise 
for  the  "  soul  of  goodness  "  they  contain.  He  has,  in 
fact,  put  so  much  strong  sense  on  the  side  of  the  jeal- 
ous Florentine  masters  of  his  hero  that  his  own  sym- 

\i  !  Browning  himself  uses  this  parallel  in  almost  his  first  reference 
to  Luria  while  still  unwritten :  Letters  of  R.  B.  and  E.  B.  B.,  i.  26. 


MATURING    METHODS  63 

pathies  were  divided,  with  paralysing  effect,  it  would 
seem,  upon  his  interest  in  drama.1  Even  the  formida- 
ble antagonism  of  Braccio,  the  Florentine  Commis- 
sary, is  buttressed,  if  not  based,  upon  a  resolve  to  de- 
fend the  rights  of  civilisation  against  militarism,  of 
intellect  against  brute  force.  "  Brute  force  shall  not 
rule  Florence."  Even  so,  it  is  only  after  conflict  and 
fluctuation  that  he  decides  to  allow  Luria's  trial  to 
take  its  course.  Puccio,  again,  the  former  general  of 
Florence,  superseded  by  Luria,  and  now  serving  under 
his  command,  turns  out  not  quite  the  u  pale  discon- 
tented man  "  whom  Browning  originally  designed  and 
whom  such  a  situation  was  no  doubt  calculated  to  pro- 
duce. Instead  of  a  Cassius,  enviously  scowling  at  the 
greatness  of  his  former  comrade,  Caesar,  we  have  one 
whose  generous  admiration  for  the  alien  set  over  him 
struggles  hard,  and  not  unsuccessfully,  with  natural 
resentment.  In  keeping  with  such  company  is  the 
noble  Pisan  general,  who  vies  with  Luria  in  generosity 
and  twice  intervenes  decisively  to  save  him  from  the 
Florentine  attack.  Even  Domizia,  the  "  panther  " 
lady  who  comes  to  the  camp  burning  for  vengeance 
upon  Florence  for  the  death  of  her  kinsmen,  and 
hoping  to  attain  it  by  embroiling  him  with  the  city, 
finally  emerges  as  his  lover.  But  in  Domizia  he  con- 
fessedly failed.  The  correspondence  with  Miss  Bar- 
rett stole  the  vitality  from  all  mere  imaginary  women ; 
"  the  panther  would  not  be  tamed."     Her  hatred  and 

1  "  For  me,  the  misfortune  is,  I  sympathise  just  as  much  with 
these  as  with  him, — so  there  can  no  good  come  of  keeping  this 
wild  company  any  longer." — Feb.  26,  1845. 


64  BROWNING 

her  love  alike  merely  beat  the  air.  With  all  her  volu- 
bility, she  is  almost  as  little  in  place  in  the  economy 
of  the  drama  as  in  that  of  the  camp;  her  "wild  mass 
of  rage  "  has  the  air  of  being  a  valued  property  which 
she  manages  and  exhibits,  not  an  impelling  and  con- 
suming fire.  The  more  potent  passion  of  Luria  and 
his  lieutenant  Husain  is  more  adequately  rendered, 
though  "the  simple  Moorish  instinct"  in  them  is 
made  to  accomplish  startling  feats  in  European  sub- 
tlety. The  East  with  its  gift  of  "  feeling  "  comes 
once  more,  as  in  the  Druses^  into  tragic  contact  with 
the  North  and  its  gift  of  "  thought  "  ;  but  it  is  to  the 
feeling  East  and  not  to  thinking  North  that  we  owe 
the  clear  analysis  and  exposition  of  the  contrast. 
Luria  has  indeed,  like  Djabal,  assimilated  just  so  much 
of  European  culture  as  makes  its  infusion  fatal  to  him  : 
he  suffers  the  doom  of  the  lesser  race 

"  Which  when  it  apes  the  greater  is  foregone." 

But  the  noblest  quality  of  the  lesser  race  flashes  forth 
at  the  close  when  he  takes  his  life,  not  in  defiance,  nor 
in  despair,  but  as  a  last  act  of  passionate  fidelity  to 
Florence.  This  is  conceived  with  a  refinement  of 
moral  imagination  too  subtle  perhaps  for  appreciation 
on  the  stage;  but  of  the  tragic  power  and  pathos  of 
the  conception  there  can  be  no  question.  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing, whose  eager  interest  accompanied  this  drama 
through  every  stage  of  its  progress,  justly  dwelt  upon 
its  "  grandeur."  The  busy  exuberance  of  Browning's 
thinking  was  not  favourable  to  effects  which  multi- 
plicity of  detail  tends  to  destroy ;  but  the  fate  of  this 


MATURING    METHODS  65 

son  of  the  "lone  and  silent  East,"  though  utterly 
un-Shakespearean  in  motive,  recalls,  more  nearly  than 
anything  else  in  Browning's  dramas,  the  heroic  tragedy, 
of  Shakespeare. 

Ill 

"  Mere  escapes  of  my  inner  power,  like  the  light 
of  a  revolving  lighthouse  leaping  out  at  intervals  from 
a  narrow  chink ;  "  so  wrote  Browning  in  effect  to  Miss 
Barrett  (Feb.  n,  1845)  of  the  "scenes  and  song- 
scraps,"  of  which  the  first  instalment  had  appeared 
three  years  before  as  the  Dramatic  Lyrics.  Yet  it  is 
just  by  the  intermittent  flashes  that  the  lighthouse  is 
identified ;  and  Browning's  genius,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  in  the  end  to  be  most  truly  denoted  by  these 
"  mere  escapes."  With  a  few  notable  exceptions, 
they  offer  little  to  the  student  of  Browning's  ideology  ; 
they  do  not  illustrate  his  theories  of  life,  they  disclose 
no  good  in  evil  and  no  hope  in  ill-success.  But  they 
are  full  of  an  exuberant  joy  in  life  itself,  as  seen  by  a 
keen  observer  exempt  from  its  harsher  conditions,  to 
whom  all  power  and  passion  are  a  feast.  He  watches 
the  angers,  the  malignities  of  men  and  women,  as  one 
might  watch  the  quarrels  of  wild  beasts,  not  cynically, 
but  with  the  detached,  as  it  were  professional,  interest 
of  a  born  "  fighter."  The  loftier  hatred,  which  is  a 
form  of  love, — the  sublime  hatred  of  a  Dante,  the 
tragic  hatred  of  a  Timon,  even  the  unforgetting,  self- 
consuming  hatred  of  a  HeathclifF, — did  not  now,  or 
ever,  engage  his  imagination.  The  indignant  invec- 
tive against  a  political  renegade,  "  Just  for  a  handful 


66  BROWNING 

of  silver  he  left  us,"  in  which  Browning  spoke  his 
own  mind,  is  poor  and  uncharacteristic  compared  with 
pieces  in  which  he  stood  aside  and  let  some  accom- 
plished devil,  like  the  Duke  in  My  last  Duchess,  some 
clerical  libertine,  like  the  bishop  of  St.  Praxed's,  some 
sneaking  reptile,  like  the  Spanish  friar,  some  tiger- 
hearted  Regan,  like  the  lady  of  The  Laboratory,  or 
some  poor  crushed  and  writhing  worm,  like  the  girl 
of  The  Confessional,  utter  their  callous  cynicism  or 
their  death-bed  torment,  the  snarl  of  petty  spite,  the 
low  fierce  cry  of  triumphant  malice,  the  long-drawn 
shriek  of  futile  rage.  There  was  commonly  an  ele- 
ment of  unreason,  extravagance,  even  grotesqueness, 
in  the  hatreds  that  caught  his  eye;  he  had  a  relish  for 
the  gratuitous  savagery  of  the  lady  in  Time's  Revenges, 
who  would  calmly  decree  that  her  lover  should  be 
burnt  in  a  slow  fire  u  if  that  would  compass  her 
desire."  He  seized  the  grotesque  side  of  persecution  ; 
and  it  is  not  fanciful  to  see  in  the  delightful  chronicle 
of  the  Nemesis  inflicted  upon  "  Sibrandus  Schafna- 
burgensis  "  a  foretaste  of  the  sardonic  confessions  of 
Instans  Tyrannus.  And  he  seized  the  element  of  sheer 
physical  zest  in  even  eager  and  impassioned  action ; 
the  tramp  of  the  march,  the  swing  of  the  gallop  in 
the  fiery  Cavalier  Tunes,  the  crash  of  Gismond's 
"back-handed  blow"  upon  Gauthier's  mouth;  the 
exultant  lift  of  the  "  great  pace  "  of  the  riders  who 
bring  the  Good  News. 

,  Of  love  poetry,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  little 
in  these  first  Lyrics  and  Romances.  Browning  had 
had  warm  friendships  with  women,  and  was  singularly 


MATURING    METHODS  67 

attractive  to  them ;  but  at  thirty-three  love  had  at 
most  sent  a  dancing  ripple  across  the  bright  surface 
of  his  life,  and  it  apparently  counted  for  nothing  in 
his  dreams.  His  plans,  as  he  told  Miss  Barrett,  had 
been  made  without  any  thought  of  u  finding  such  a 
one  as  you."  That  discovery  introduced  a  new  and 
unknown  factor  into  his  scheme  of  things.  The 
love-poetry  of  the  Dramatic  Lyrics  and  Romances  is 
still  somewhat  tentative  and  insecure.  The  beautiful 
fantasia  In  a  Gondola  was  directly  inspired  by  a  picture 
of  his  friend  Maclise.  He  paints  the  romance  of  the 
lover's  twilight  tryst  with  all  his  incisive  vigour ;  but 
his  own  pulse  beats  rather  with  the  lover  who  goes 
forth  at  daybreak,  and  feels  the  kindling  summons  of 
the  morning  glory  of  sea  and  sunlight  into  the  u  world 
of  men."  His  attitude  to  women  is  touched  with  the 
virginal  reserve  of  the  young  Hippolytus,  whose  tragic 
fate  he  had  told  in  the  lofty  Prologue  of  Artemis.  He 
approaches  them  with  a  kind  of  delicate  and  distant 
awe ;  tender,  even  chivalrous,  but  accentuating  rather 
the  reserves  and  reticences  of  chivalry  than  its  re- 
wards. The  lady  of  The  Flower's  Name  is  beautiful, 
but  her  beauty  is  only  shyly  hinted  ;  we  see  no  feature 
of  face  or  form  ;  only  the  fold  of  her  dress  brushing 
against  the  box  border,  the  "  twinkling  "  of  her  white 
fingers  among  the  dark  leaves.  The  typical  lover  of 
these  lyrics  is  of  a  temperament  in  which  feminine 
sensitiveness  and  masculine  tenacity  are  character- 
istically blended ;  a  temperament  which  the  faintest 
and  most  fugitive  signs  of  love — a  word,  a  glance,  the 
impalpable  music  of  a  romantic  name — not  only  kin- 


68  BROWNING 

die  and  subdue,  but  permanently  fortify  and  secure. 
Cristinay  Rudel  and  the  Lost  Mistress  stand  in  a  line 
of  development  which  culminates  in  The  Last  Ride 
Together.  Cristina's  lover  has  but  "  changed  eyes  " 
with  her ;  but  no  queenly  scorn  of  hers  can  undo  the 
spiritual  transformation  which  her  glance  has  wrought : 

u  Her  soul's  mine ;  and  thus,  grown  perfect, 
I  shall  pass  my  life's  remainder." 

The  Lost  Mistress  is  an  exquisitely  tender  and  pathetic 
farewell,  but  not  the  stifled  cry  of  a  man  who  has  re- 
ceived a  crushing  blow.  Not  easily,  but  yet  without 
any  ruinous  convulsion,  he  makes  that  transition  from 
love  to  "  mere  friendship  "  which  passionate  men  so 
hardly  endure. 

The  really  tragic  love-story  was,  for  Browning,  the 
story  not  of  love  rejected  but  of  love  flagging,  fading, 
or  crushed  out. 

«  Never  fear,  but  there's  provision 
Of  the  devil's  to  quench  knowledge 
Lest  on  earth  we  walk  in  rapture," 

Cristina's  lover  had  bitterly  reflected.  Courts,  as  the 
focusses  of  social  artifice  and  ceremonial  restraint,  were 
for  him  the  peculiar  breeding-places  of  such  tragedies, 
and  in  several  of  the  most  incisive  of  the  Lyrics  and 
Romances  he  appears  as  the  champion  of  the  love 
they  menace.  The  hapless  Last  Duchess  suffers  for 
the  largess  of  her  kindly  smiles.  The  duchess  of 
The  Flight  and  the  lady  of  The  Glove  successfully  re- 
volt against  pretentious  substitutes  for  love  offered  in 


MATURING    METHODS  69 

love's  name.  The  Flight  is  a  tale,  as  Mrs.  Browning 
said,  "  with  a  great  heart  in  it."  Both  the  Gipsy- 
woman  whose  impassioned  pleading  we  overhear,  and 
the  old  Huntsman  who  reports  it,  are  drawn  from  a 
domain  of  rough  and  simple  humanity  not  very  often 
trodden  by  Browning.  The  genial  retainer  admirably 
mediates  between  the  forces  of  the  Court  which  he 
serves  and  those  of  the  wild  primitive  race  to  which 
his  world-old  calling  as  a  hunter  makes  him  kin  ;  his 
hearty,  untutored  speech  and  character  envelop  the 
story  like  an  atmosphere,  and  create  a  presumption 
that  heart  and  nature  will  ultimately  have  their  way. 
Even  the  hinted  landscape-background  serves  as  a 
mute  chorus.  In  this  "  great  wild  country  "  of  wide 
forests  and  pine-clad  mountains,  the  court  is  the 
anomaly. 

Similarly,  in  The  Glove,  the  lion,  so  magnificently 
sketched  by  Browning,  is  made  to  bear  out  the  inner 
expressiveness  of  the  tale  in  a  way  anticipated  by  no 
previous  teller.  The  lion  of  Schiller's  ballad  is 
already  assuaged  to  his  circumstances,  and  enters  the 
arena  like  a  courtier  entering  a  drawing-room. 
Browning's  lion,  still  terrible  and  full  of  the  tameless 
passion  for  freedom,  bursts  in  with  flashing  forehead, 
like  the  spirit  of  the  desert  of  which  he  dreams  :  it  is 
the  irruption  of  this  mighty  embodiment  of  elemental 
Nature  which  wakens  in  the  lady  the  train  of  feeling 
and  thought  that  impel  her  daring  vindication  of  its 
claims. 

Art  was  far  from  being  as  strange  to  the  Browning 


70  BROWNING 

of  1842-45  as  love.  But  he  seized  with  a  peculiar 
predilection  those  types  and  phases  of  the  Art-world 
with  which  love  has  Jeast  to  do.  He  studies  the 
egoisms  of  artists,  the  vanities  of  connoisseurs  ;  the 
painter  Lutwyche  showing  "  how  he  can  hate  "  ;  the 
bishop  of  St.  Praxed's  piteously  bargaining  on  his 
death-bed  for  the  jasper  and  lapislazuli  "  which  Gan- 
dolph  shall  not  choose  but  see  and  burst  "  ;  the  duke 
of  the  Last  Duchess  displaying  his  wife's  portrait  as 
the  wonder  of  his  gallery,  and  unconcernedly  disposing 
of  her  person.  In  a  single  poem  only  Browning 
touches  those  problems  of  the  artist  life  which  were 
to  occupy  him  in  the  'Fifties  ;  and  the  Pictor  Ignotus 
is  as  far  behind  the  Andrea  del  Sarto  and  Fra  Lippo 
Lippi  in  intellectual  force  as  in  dramatic  brilliance  and 
plasticity.  Browning's  sanguine  and  energetic  tem- 
perament always  inclined  him  to  over-emphasis,  and 
he  has  somewhat  over-emphasised  the  anaemia  of  this 
anemic  soul.  Rarely  again  did  he  paint  in  such  reso- 
lute uniformity  of  ashen  grey.  The  "  Pictor  "  is  the 
earliest,  and  the  palest,  of  Browning's  pale  ascetics, 
who  make,  in  one  way  or  another,  the  great  refusal, 
and  lose  their  souls  by  trying  to  save  them  in  a  bar- 
renness which  they  call  purity. 

The  musician  as  such  holds  at  this  stage  an  even 
smaller  place  in  Browning's  art  than  the  painter. 
None  of  these  Lyrics  foreshadows  Abt  Vogler  and 
Hugues  of  Saxe-Gotha  as  the  Pictor  foreshadows  Lippi 
and  Del  Sarto.  But  if  he  did  not  as  yet  explore  the 
ways  of  the  musical  soul,  he  shows  already  a  peculiar 
instinct  for  the  poetic  uses  and  capabilities  of  music. 


MATURING    METHODS 


7* 


He  sings  with  peculiar  entrain  of  the  transforming 
magic  of  song.  The  thrush  and  cuckoo,  among  the 
throng  of  singing-birds,  attract  him  by  their  musi- 
cianly  qualities — the  "  careless  rapture  "  repeated,  the 
"  minor  third  "  which  only  the  cuckoo  knows.  These 
Lyrics  and  Romances  of  1842-45  are  as  full  of 
tributes  to  the  power  of  music  as  V Allegro  and  // 
Penseroso  themselves.  Orpheus,  whose  story  Milton 
there  touched  so  ravishingly,  was  too  trite  an  instance 
to  arrest  Browning  ;  it  needed  perhaps  the  stimulus 
of  his  friend  Leighton's  picture  to  call  forth,  long  af- 
terwards, the  few  choice  verses  on  Eurydice.  More 
to  his  mind  was  the  legend  of  that  motley  Orpheus  of 
the  North,  the  Hamelin  piper, — itself  a  picturesque 
motley  of  laughter  and  tears.  The  Gipsy's  lay  of 
far-ofF  romance  awakens  the  young  duchess ;  Theo- 
crite's  "  little  human  praise  "  wins  God's  ear,  and 
Pippa's  songs  transform  the  hearts  of  men.  A  poet 
in  this  vein  would  fall  naturally  enough  upon  the 
Biblical  story  of  the  cure  of  the  stricken  Saul  by  the 
songs  of  the  boy  David.  But  a  special  influence  drew 
Browning  to  this  subject, — the  wonderful  Song  to 
David  of  Christopher  Smart, — "  a  person  of  impor- 
tance in  his  day,"  who  owes  it  chiefly  to  Browning's 
enthusiastic  advocacy  of  a  poem  he  was  never  weary 
of  declaiming,  that  he  is  a'poet  of  importance  in  ours. 
Smart's  David  is  before  all  things  the  glowing  singer 
of  the  Joy  of  Earth, — the  glory  of  the  visible  creation 
uttering  itself  in  rapturous  Praise  of  the  Lord.  And 
it  is  this  David  of  whom  we  have  a  presentiment  in 
the   no   less  glowing   songs  with  which   Browning's 


72  BROWNING 

shepherd-boy  seeks  to  reach  the  darkened  mind  of 
Saul. 

Of  the  poem  we  now  possess,  only  the  first  nine 
sections  belong  to  the  present  phase  of  Browning's 
work.  These  were  confessedly  incomplete,  but 
Browning  was  content  to  let  them  go  forth  as  they 
were,  and  less  bent  upon  even  their  ultimate  comple- 
tion, it  would  seem,  than  Miss  Barrett,  who  bade  him 
"  remember "  that  the  poem  was  "  there  only  as  a 
first  part,  and  that  the  next  parts  must  certainly  fol- 
low and  complete  what  will  be  a  great  lyrical  work — 
now  remember."1  And  the  "  next  parts  "  when  they 
came,  in  Men  and  Women,  bore  the  mark  of  his  ten 
years'  fellowship  with  her  devout  and  ecstatic  soul,  as 
well  as  of  his  own  growth  towards  the  richer  and  fuller 
harmonies  of  verse.  The  1845  fragment  falls,  of 
course,  far  short  of  its  sequel  in  imaginative  audacity 
and  splendour,  but  it  is  steeped  in  a  pellucid  beauty 
which  Browning's  busy  intellectuality  was  too  prone 
to  dissipate.  Kenyon  read  it  nightly,  as  he  told  Mrs. 
Browning,  "to  put  his  dreams  in  order";  finely 
comparing  it  to  u  Homer's  Shield  of  Achilles,  thrown 
into  lyrical  whirl  and  life."  And  certainly,  if  Brown- 
ing anywhere  approaches  that  Greek  plasticity  for 
which  he  cared  so  little,  it  is  in  these  exquisitely 
sculptured  yet  breathing  scenes.  Then,  as  the  young 
singer  kindles  to  his  work,  his  song,  without  becom- 
ing less  transparent,  grows  more  personal  and  impas- 
sioned ;  he  no  longer  repeats  the  familiar  chants  of  his 
tribe,  but  breaks  into  a  new  impetuous  inspiration  of 
1  E.  B.  B.  to  R.  B.,  Dec.  10,  1845. 


MATURING    METHODS 


73 


his  own  j  the  lyrical  whirl  and  life  gathers  swiftness 
and  energy,  and  the  delicate  ba^-reljefs  of  Saul's  peo- 
ple, in  their  secular  pieties  of  grief  or  joy,  merge  in 
the  ecstatic  vision  of  Saul  himself,  as  he  had  once 
been,  and  as  he  might  yet  be,  that 

"  boyhood  of  wonder  and  hope, 
Present  promise    and  wealth    of    the    future   beyond  the  eye's 
scope," 

all  the  fulness  and  glory  of  the  life  of  humanity 
gathered  upon  his  single  head.  It  is  the  very  voice 
of  life,  which  thrills  and  strikes  across  the  spiritual 
darkness  of  Saul,  as  the  coming  of  Hyperion  scattered 
the  shadows  of  Saturnian  night. 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


CHAPTER  IV 

WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY.       MEN  AND  WOMEN 

This  foot,  once  planted  on  the  goal ; 
This  glory-garland  round  my  soul. 

— The  Last  Ride  Together. 

Warmer  climes 
Give  brighter  plumage,  stronger  wing ;  the  breeze 
Of  Alpine  highths  thou  playest  with,  borne  on 
Beyond  Sorrento  and  Amalfi,  where 
The  Siren  waits  thee,  singing  song  for  song. 

— Landor. 


The  Bells  and  Pomegranates  made  no  very  great 
way  with  the  public,  which  found  the  matter  un- 
equal and  the  title  obscure.  But  both  the  title  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  single  poems  are  linked  in- 
separably with  the  most  intimate  personal  relationship 
of  his  life.  Hardly  one  of  the  Romances,  as  we 
saw,  but  had  been  read  in  MS.  by  Elizabeth  Barrett, 
and  pronounced  upon  with  the  frank  yet  critical  de- 
light of  her  nature.  In  the  abstruse  symbolic  title, 
too, — implying,  as  Browning  expected  his  readers  to 
discover,  "  sound  and  sense  "  or  "  music  and  discours- 
ing,"— her  wit  had  divined  a  more  felicitous  applica- 
tion to  Browning's  poetry  — 
74 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  75 

"  Some  •  Pomegranate,'  which,  if  cut  deep  down  the  middle, 
Shows  a  heart  within  blood-tinctured,  of  a  veined  humanity." 

The  two  poets  were  still  strangers  when  this  was 
written;  but  each  had  for  years  recognised  in  the 
other  a  new  and  wonderful  poetic  force,1  and  the 
vivid  words  marked  the  profound  community  of  spirit 
which  was  finally  to  draw  them  together.  A  few 
years  later,  a  basket  of  pomegranates  was  handed  to 
her,  when  travelling  with  her  husband  in  France,  and 
she  laughingly  accepted  the  omen.  The  omen  was 
fulfilled ;  Elizabeth  Browning's  poetry  expanded  and 
matured  in  the  companionship  of  that  rich-veined 
human  heart;  it  was  assuredly  not  by  chance  that 
Browning,  ten  years  after  her  death,  recalled  her 
symbol  in  the  name  of  his  glorious  woman-poet, 
Balaustion. 

But  she,  on  her  part,  also  brought  a  new  and  potent 
influence  to  bear  upon  his  poetry,  the  only  one  which 
after  early  manhood  he  ever  experienced ;  and  their 
union  was  by  far  the  most  signal  event  in  Browning's 
intellectual  history,  as  it  was  in  his  life.  Her  ex- 
perience up  to  the  time  when  they  met  had  been  in 
most  points  singularly  unlike  his  own.  Though  of 
somewhat  higher  social  status,  she  had  seen  far  less 
of  society  and  of  the  world  ;  but  she  had  gone  through 
the  agony  of  a  passionately  loved  brother's  sudden 
death,  and  the  glory  of  English  wood  and   meadow 

1  She  had  at  once  discerned  the  "  new  voice "  in  Paracelsus, 
1835  '■>  anc*  tne  occasion  may  have  been  not  much  later  ("  years 
ago  "  in  1845)  on  which  he  was  all  but  admitted  to  the  "  shrine  " 
of  the  "  world's  wonder  "  (R.  B.  to  E.  B.  B.,  Jan.  10,  1845). 


j6  BROWNING 

was  for  her  chiefly,  as  to  Milton  in  his  age,  an 
enchanted  memory  of  earlier  days,  romantically 
illuminating  a  darkened  London  chamber.  "  Most 
of  my  events,  and  nearly  all  my  intense  pleasures," 
she  said  to  Home,  "  have  passed  in  my  thoughts." 
Both  were  eager  students,  and  merited  the  hazardous 
reputation  which  both  incurred,  of  being  u  learned 
poets  "  ;  but  Browning  wore  his  learning,  not  indeed 
u  lightly,  like  a  flower,"  but  with  the  cool  mastery  of 
a  scholarly  man  of  the  world,  whose  interpretation  of 
books  is  controlled  at  every  point  by  his  knowledge 
of  men;  while  Miss  Barrett's  Greek  and  Hebrew 
chiefly  served  to  allure  an  imagination  naturally 
ecstatic  and  visionary  along  paths  crowned  with 
congenial  unearthly  symbols,  with  sublime  shapes  of 
gods  and  Titans,  angels  and  seraphim.  Then,  not- 
withstanding the  role  of  hopeless  invalid  which  she  was 
made  to  play,  and  did  play  with  touching  conviction, 
she  had,  it  is  clear,  a  fund  of  buoyant  and  impulsive 
vitality  hardly  inferior  to  Browning's  own ;  only  that 
the  energy  which  in  him  flowed  out  through  natural 
channels  had  in  her  to  create  its#own  opportunities, 
and  surged  forth  with  harsh  or  startling  violence, — 
sometimes  "  tearing  open  a  parcel  instead  of  untying 
it,"  and  sometimes  compelling  words  to  serve  her 
will  by  masterful  audacities  of  collocation.  Both 
poets  stood  apart  from  most  of  their  contemporaries 
by  a  certain  exuberance — "  a  fine  excess  " — quite 
foreign  to  the  instincts  of  a  generation  which  re- 
pudiated the  Revolution  and  did  its  best  to  repudiate 
Byron.     But    Browning's    exuberance    was    genial, 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  77 

hearty,  and  on  occasion  brutal ;  hers  was  exalted, 
impulsive,  "  headlong,"  l  intense,  and  often  fantastic 
and  quaint.  His  imagination  flamed  forth  like  an 
intenser  sunlight,  heightening  and  quickening  all  that 
was  alive  and  alert  in  man  and  Nature ;  hers  shot  out 
superb  or  lurid  volcanic  gleams  across  the  simplicity 
of  natural  chiaroscuro,  disturbing  the  air  with  con- 
flicting and  incalculable  effects  of  strange  horror  and 
strange  loveliness.  It  might  have  been  averred  of 
Browning  that  he  said  everything  he  thought ;  of  her 
the  truer  formula  would  be  her  own,  that  she  "  took 
every  means  of  saying  "  what  she  thought.2  There 
was  something  of  iEschylus  in  her,  as  there  was  much 
of  Aristophanes  in  him ;  it  was  not  for  nothing  that 
her  girlish  ardour  had  twice  flung  itself  upon  the  task 
of  rendering  the  Prometheus  Bound  in  English ;  they 
met  on  common  ground  in  the  human  and  pathetic 
Euripides.  But  her  power  was  lyric,  not  dramatic. 
She  sang  from  the  depths  of  a  wonderfully  rich  and 
passionate  nature ;  while  he  was  most  truly  himself 
when  he  was  personating  some  imaginary  mind. 

Early  in  January,  1845,  the  two  poets  were  brought 
by  the  genial  Kenyon,  her  cousin  and  his  good  friend, 

1  The  word  her  Italian  tutor  meant  to  describe  her  by,  but  could 
not  pronounce  it.  He  said  she  was  testa  lunga  (Letters  of  R.  and 
E.  £.,  i.  7). 

2  Letters,  R.  and  E.  £.,  i.  8.  Cf.  her  admirable  letter  to 
Ruskin,  ten  years  later,  apropos  of  the  charge  of  "  affectation." 
"  To  say  a  thing  faintly,  because  saying  it  strongly  sounds  odd  or 
obscure  or  unattractive  for  some  reason  to  careless  readers,  does 
appear  to  me  bad  policy  as  well  as  bad  art "  (Letters  of  E.  B.  B.t 
ii.  200). 


J  8  BROWNING 

into  actual  communication,  and  the  memorable  cor- 
respondence, the  most  famous  of  its  kind  in  English 
literature,  at  once  began.  Browning,  as  his  way  was 
in  telling  other  men's  stories,  burst  at  once  in  medias 
res  in  this  great  story  of  his  own.  "  I  love  your 
verses,  my  dear  Miss  Barrett,  with  all  my  heart,"  he 
assures  her  in  the  first  sentence  of  his  first  letter.  He 
feels  them  already  too  much  a  part  of  himself  to  ever 
"  try  and  find  fault," — "  nothing  comes  of  it  all, — so 
into  me  has  it  gone  and  part  of  me  has  it  become, 
this  great  living  poetry  of  yours,  not  a  flower  of 
which  but  took  root  and  grew."  It  was  "living," 
like  his  own ;  it  was  also  direct,  as  his  own  was  not. 
His  frank  cameraderie  was  touched  from  the  outset 
with  a  fervent,  wondering  admiration  to  which  he  was 
by  no  means  prone.  u  You  do,  what  I  always  wanted, 
hoped  to  do,  and  only  seem  likely  now  to  do  for  the 
first  time.  You  speak  out,  you, — I  only  make  men 
and  women  speak — give  you  truth  broken  into  pris- 
matic hues,  and  fear  the  pure  white  light,  even  if  it  is 
in  me,  but  I  am  going  to  try."  Thus  the  first  contact 
with  the  "  Lyric  Love  "  of  after  days  set  vibrating  the 
chords  of  all  that  was  lyric  and  personal  in  Brown- 
ing's nature.  His  brilliant  virtuosity  in  the  person- 
ation of  other  minds  threatened  to  check  all  simple 
utterance  of  his  own.  The  "  First  Poem  "  of  Robert 
Browning  had  yet  to  be  written,  but  now,  as  soon  as 
he  had  broken  from  his  "dancing  ring  of  men  and 
women," — the  Dramatic  Lyrics  and  Romances  and 
one  or  two  outstanding  dramas, — he  meant  to  write 
it.      Miss    Barrett    herself    hardly    understood    until 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  79 

much  later  the  effect  that  her  personality,  the  very 
soul  that  spoke  in  •  her  poetry,  had  upon  her  corre- 
spondent. She  revelled  in  the  Dramatic  Lyrics  and 
Romances,  and  not  least  in  rollicking  pieces,  like 
Sibrandus  or  The  Spanish  Cloister,  which  appealed  to 
the  robust  masculine  humour  with  which  this  out- 
wardly fragile  woman  is  too  rarely  credited.  Pippa 
Passes  she  could  find  in  her  heart  to  covet  the  author- 
ship of,  more  than  any  of  his  other  works — a  prefer- 
ence in  which  he  agreed.  Few  more  brilliant  ap- 
preciations of  English  poetry  are  extant  than  some  of 
those  which  sped  during  1845  anc^  1846  from  the  in- 
valid chamber  in  Harley  Street  to  the  "  old  room " 
looking  out  on  the  garden  at  New  Cross.  But  she 
did  not  conceal  from  him  that  she  wished  him  to  seek 
u  the  other  crown  "  also.  "  I  do  not  think,  with  all 
that  music  in  you,  only  your  own  personality  should 
be  dumb."  l  But  she  undoubtedly,  with  all  her  sense 
of  the  glory  of  the  dramatic  art,  discouraged  his  writ- 
ing for  the  stage,  a  domain  which  she  regarded  with 
an  animus  curiously  compounded  of  Puritan  loathing, 
poetic  scorn,  and  well-bred  shrinking  from  the  vul- 
garity of  the  green-room.  And  it  is  clear  that  before 
the  last  plays,  Luria  and  A  Soul's  Tragedy,  were  pub- 
lished his  old  stage  ambition  had  entirely  vanished. 
It  was  not  altogether  hyperbole  (in  any  case  the 
hyperbole  was  wholly  unconscious)  when  he  spoke  of 
her  as  a  new  medium  to  which  his  sight  was  gradually 
becoming  adjusted,  "seeing  all  things,  as  it  does,  in 
you." 
1  E.  A  B.  to  R.  B.,  26th  May,  1846.     Cf.  R.  B.,  13th  Feb.,  1846. 


80  BROWNING 

She,  on  her  part,  united,  as  clever  women  in  love 
so  often  do,  with  a  woman's  more  utter  self-abasement 
a  larger  measure  of  critical  penetration.  The  "  poor 
tired  wandering  singer,"  who  so  humbly  took  the 
hand  of  the  liberal  and  princely  giver,  and  who  with 
perfect  sincerity  applied  to  herself  his  unconscious 
phrase  — 

"  Cloth  of  frieze,  be  not  too  bold 
Though  thou'rt  match'd  with  cloth  of  gold," 

"  That,  beloved,  was  written  for  me  !  "  l — shows  at 
the  same  time  the  keenest  insight  into  the  qualities  of 
his  work.  She  felt  in  him  the  masculine  temper  and 
the  masculine  range,  his  singular  union  of  rough  and 
even  burly  power  with  subtle  intellect  and  penetrating 
music.  With  the  world  of  society  and  affairs  she  had 
other  channels  of  communication.  But  no  one  of 
her  other  friends — not  Orion  Home,  not  even  Kenyon 
— bridged  as  Browning  did  the  gulf  between  the 
world  of  society  and  affairs,  which  she  vaguely  knew, 
and  the  romantic  world  of  poetry  in  which  she  lived. 
If  she  quickened  the  need  for  lyrical  utterance  in 
him,  he  drew  her,  in  his  turn,  into  a  closer  and  richer 
contact  with  common  things.  If  she  had  her  part  in 
Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day,  he  had  his,  no  less,  in 
Aurora  Leigh. 

Twenty-one    months   passed    between   Browning's 
first    letter  and   their   marriage.     The    tentative    ex- 
change of  letters  passed  into  a  formal  "  contract "  to 
correspond, — sudden  if  not  as  "  unadvised  "  as  the 
1  E.  B.  B.  to  R.  B.,  9th  Jan.,  1846. 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  8 1 

love-vows  of  Juliet,  a  parallel  which  he  shyly  hinted, 
and  she,  with  the  security  of  the  whole-hearted,  boldly 
recalled.  All  the  winter  and  early  spring  her  health 
forbade  a  meeting,  and  it  is  clear  that  but  for  the  quiet 
pressure  of  his  will  they  never  would  have  met.  But 
with  May  came  renewed  vigour,  and  she  reluctantly 
consented  to  a  visit.  "  He  has  a  way  of  putting 
things  which  I  have  not,  a  way  of  putting  aside, — so 
he  came."  A  few  weeks  later  he  spoke.  She  at  first 
absolutely  refused  to  entertain  the  thought;  he  be- 
lieved, and  was  silent.  But  in  the  meantime  the  let- 
ters and  the  visits  "  rained  down  more  and  more," 
and  the  fire  glowed  under  the  surface  of  the  writing 
and  the  talk,  subdued  but  unsuppressed.  Once  more 
his  power  of  "  putting  aside  "  compelled  her  to  listen, 
and  when  she  listened  she  found  herself  assailed  at  a 
point  which  her  own  exalted  spirituality  made  her  least 
able  to  defend,  by  a  love  more  utterly  self-sacrificing 
than  even  she  had  ever  imagined.  This  man  of  the 
masterful  will,  who  took  no  refusals,  might  perhaps  in 
any  case  have  finally  "  put  aside  "  all  obstacles  to  her 
consent.  But  when  he  disclosed — to  her  amazement, 
well  as  she  thought  she  knew  him — that  he  had  asked 
the  right  to  love  her  without  claiming  any  love  in  re- 
turn, that  when  he  first  spoke  he  had  believed  her 
disease  to  be  incurable,  and  yet  preferred  to  be  allowed 
to  sit  only  a  day  at  her  side  to  the  fulfilment  of  "  the 
brightest  dream  which  should  exclude  her,"  her  re- 
sistance gave  way, — and  little  by  little,  in  her  own 
beautiful  words,  she  was  drawn  into  the  persuasion 
that   something  was   left,  and  that   she  could  still  do 


82  BROWNING 

something  for  the  happiness  of  another.  In  another 
sense  than  she  intended  in  the  great  opening  sonnet 
u  from  the  Portuguese,"  Love,  undreamt  of,  had  come 
to  her  with  the  irresistible  might  of  Death,  and  called 
her  back  into  life  by  rekindling  in  her  the  languishing, 
almost  extinguished,  desire  to  live.  Is  it  hyperbole  to 
be  reminded  of  that  other  world-famous  rescue  from 
death  which  Browning,  twenty-five  years  later,  was  to 
tell  with  such  infinite  verve  ?  Browning  did  not  need 
to  imagine,  but  only  to  remember,  the  magnificent 
and  audacious  vitality  of  his  Herakles ;  he  had  brought 
back  his  own  "  espoused  saint,"  like  Alcestis,  from 
the  grave. 

But  the  life  thus  gained  was,  in  the  immediate 
future,  full  of  problems.  Browning,  said  Kenyon, 
was  "  great  in  everything " ;  and  during  the  year 
which  followed  their  engagement  he  had  occasion  to 
exhibit  the  capacities  both  of  the  financier  he  had 
once  declined  to  be,  and  of  the  diplomatist  he  was 
willing  to  become.  Love  had  flung  upon  his  life,  as 
upon  hers,  a  sudden  splendour  for  which  he  was  in  no 
way  prepared.  u  My  whole  scheme  of  life,"  he  wrote 
to  her,1  "  (with  its  wants,  material  wants  at  least, 
closely  cut  down),  was  long  ago  calculated — and  it 
supposed  you,  the  finding  such  an  one  as  you,  utterly 
impossible."  But  his  schemes  for  a  profession  and 
an  income  were  summarily  cut  short.  Elizabeth 
Barrett  peremptorily  declined  to  countenance  any 
such  sacrifice  of  the  work  he  was  called  to  for  any 
other.  The  same  deep  sense  of  what  was  due  to 
1  R.  B.  to  E.  B.  B.,  Sept.  13,  1845. 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  83 

him,  and  to  his  wife,  sustained  her  through  the  trial 
that  remained, — from  the  apparent  degradation  of 
secrecy  and  subterfuge  which  the  domestic  policy  of 
Mr.  Barrett  made  inevitable,  to  the  mere  physical  and 
nervous  strain  of  rising,  that  September  morning  of 
1846,  from  an  invalid's  couch  to  be  married.  That 
"  peculiarity,"  as  she  gently  termed  it,  of  her  father's, 
malign  and  cruel  as  it  was,  twice  precipitated  a  happy 
crisis  in  their  fortunes,  which  prudence  might  have 
postponed.  His  refusal  to  allow  her  to  seek  health  in 
Italy  in  Oct.,  1845,  had  brought  them  definitely  to- 
gether; his  second  refusal  in  Aug.,  1846,  drove  her  to 
the  one  alternative  of  going  there  as  Browning's  wife. 
A  week  after  the  marriage  ceremony,  during  which 
they  never  met,  Mrs.  Browning  left  her  home,  with 
the  faithful  Wilson  and  the  indispensable  Flush,  en 
route  for  Southampton.  The  following  day  they  at- 
rived  in  Paris. 


II 

There  followed  fifteen  years  during  which  the  in- 
exhaustible correspondents  of  the  last  twenty  months 
exchanged  no  further  letter,  for  they  were  never 
parted.  That  is  the  sufficient  outward  symbol  of 
their  all  but  flawless  union.  After  a  leisurely  journey 
through  France,  and  an  experimental  sojourn  at  the 
goal  of  Mrs.  Browning's  two  frustrated  journeys, 
Pisa,  they  settled  towards  the  close  of  April,  1847,  m 
furnished  apartments  in  Florence,  moving  some  four 
months  later  into  the  more  permanent  home  which 


84  BROWNING 

their  presence  was  to  render  famous,  the  Palazzo  (or 
"Casa")  Guidi,  just  off  the  Piazza  Pitti. 

Their  life — mirrored  for  us  in  Mrs.  Browning's 
vivid  and  delightful  letters — was,  like  many  others,  in 
which  we  recognise  rare  and  precious  quality,  singu- 
larly wanting  in  obviously  expressive  traits.  It  is 
possible  to  describe  everything  that  went  on  in  the 
Browning  household  in  terms  applicable  to  those  of 
scores  of  other  persons  of  wide  interest,  cultivated 
tastes,  and  moderate  but  not  painfully  restricted 
means.  All  that  was  passionate,  ideal,  heroic  in  them 
found  expression  through  conditions  which  it  needs 
a  fine  eye  to  distinguish  from  those  of  easy-going 
bourgeois  mediocrity.  Their  large  and  catholic  hu- 
manity exempted  them  from  much  that  makes  for 
bold  and  sensational  outline  in  the  story  of  a  career. 
Their  poetic  home  was  built  upon  all  the  philistine 
virtues.  Mrs.  Jameson  laughed  at  their  "  miraculous 
prudence  and  economy  "  ;  and  Mrs.  Browning  herself 
laughed,  a  little,  at  her  husband's  punctilious  rigour  in 
paying  his  debts, — his  u  horror  of  owing  five  shillings 
for  five  days  " ;  Browning,  a  born  virtuoso  in  what- 
ever he  undertook,  abhorring  a  neglected  bill  as  he  did 
an  easy  rhyme,  and  all  other  symbols  of  that  slovenly 
Bohemia  which  came  nearest,  on  the  whole,  to  his 
conception  of  absolute  evil.  They  lived  at  first  in 
much  seclusion^  seeking  no  society,  and  unknown 
alike  to  the  Italian  and  the  English  quarters  of  the 
Florentine  world.  But  Arcady  was,  at  bottom,  just 
as  foreign  to  their  ways  as  Bohemia.  "  Soundless 
and  stirless  hermits,"  Mrs.  Browning  playfully  called 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  85 

them ;  but  in  no  house  in  Florence  did  the  news  of 
political  and  literary  Europe  find  keener  comment  or 
response  than  in  this  quiet  hermitage.  Two  long 
absences,  moreover  (1851-52  and  1855-56),  divided 
between  London  and  Paris,  interrupted  their  Italian 
sojourn  ;  and  these  times  were  crowded  with  friendly 
intercourse,  which  they  keenly  enjoyed.  "No  place 
like  Paris  for  living  in,"  Browning  declared  after  re- 
turning from  its  blaze  to  the  quiet  retreat  of  Casa 
Guidi.  But  both  felt  no  less  deeply  the  charm  of 
their  "  dream  life  "  within  these  old  tapestried  walls.1 
Nor  did  either,  in  spite  of  their  delight  in  French 
poetry  and  their  vivid  interest  in  French  politics, 
really  enter  the  French  world.  They  were  received 
by  George  Sand,  whose  "  indiscreet  immortalities " 
had  ravished  Elizabeth  Barrett  in  her  invalid  chamber 
years  before ;  but  though  she  u  felt  the  burning  soul 
through  all  that  quietness,"  and  through  the  "  crowds 
of  ill-bred  men  who  adore  her  a  genoux  basy  betwixt  a 
puff  of  smoke  and  an  ejection  of  saliva," — they  both 
felt  that  she  did  not  care  for  them.  Dumas,  another 
admiration,  they  did  not  see;  an  introduction  to 
Hugo,  Browning  carried  about  for  years  but  had  no 
chance  of  presenting;  Beranger  they  saw  in  the 
street,  and  regretted  the  absence  of  an  intermediator. 
Balzac,  to  their  grief,  was  just  dead.  A  complete  set 
of  his  works  was  one  of  their  Florentine  ambitions. 
One  memorable  intimacy  was  formed,  however, 
during  the  Paris  winter  of  1851-52;  for  it  was  now 
that  he  first  met  Joseph  Milsand,  his  warm  friend 
1  Letters  of  E.  B.  £.,  ii.  199. 


86  BROWNING 

until  Milsand's  death  in  1886,  and  probably,  for  the 
last  twenty  years  at  least,  the  most  beloved  of  all  his 
friends,  as  he  was  at  all  times  one  of  his  shrewdest 
yet  kindliest  critics.  Their  summer  visits  to  London 
(1851,  1852,  1855,  1856)  brought  them  much  more 
of  intimate  personal  converse,  tempered,  however, 
inevitably,  in  a  yet  greater  proportion,  by  pain,  dis- 
comfort, and  fatigue.  Of  himself,  yet  more  than  of 
the  Laureate,  might  have  been  used  the  phrase  in 
which  he  was  to  dedicate  a  later  poem  to  Tennyson — 
u  noble  and  sincere  in  friendship."  The  visitors  who 
gathered  about  him  in  these  London  visits  included 
friends  who  belonged  to  every  phase  and  aspect  of  his 
career — from  his  old  master  and  mentor,  Fox,  and 
Kenyon,  the  first  begetter  of  his  wedded  happiness, 
/  to  Dante  Rossetti,  his  first  and,  for  years  to  come, 
solitary  disciple,  and  William  Allingham,  whom  Ros- 
setti introduced.  Among  his  own  contemporaries 
they  were  especially  intimate  with  Tennyson, — the 
sterling  and  masculine  "  Alfred "  of  Carlyle,  whom 
the  world  first  learnt  to  know  from  his  biography  ; 
and  with  Carlyle  himself,  a  more  genial  and  kindly 
Carlyle  than  most  others  had  the  gift  of  evoking,  and 
whom  his  biographers  mostly  efface. 

After  their  return  from  the  second  journey  to  the 
north  their  Italian  life  lost  much  of  its  dream-like 
seclusion.  The  publication  of  Men  and  Women 
(1855)  and  Aurora  Leigh  (1856)  drew  new  visitors  to 
the  salon  in  Casa  Guidi,  and  after  1853  tney  rePeat_ 
edly  wintered  in  Rome,  mingling  freely  in  its  more 
cosmopolitan  society,  and,  on  occasion,  in  the  gaieties 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  87 

of  the  Carnival.  To  the  end,  however,  their  Roman 
circle  was  more  American  than  English.  "  Is  Mr. 
Browning  an  American  ?  "  asked  an  English  lady  of 
the  American  ambassador.  "  Is  it  possible  that  you 
ask  me  that  ?  "  came  the  prompt  and  crushing  retort ; 
"  why,  there  is  not  a  village  in  the  United  States  so 
small  that  they  could  not  tell  you  that  Robert  Brown- 
ing is  an  Englishman,  and  they  wish  he  were  an 
American."  Spiritualism,  in  the  main  an  American 
institution,  became  during  the  later  years  a  centre  of 
fervid  interest  to  the  one  and  an  irritant  to  the  other. 
One  turns  gladly  from  that  episode  to  their  noble  and 
helpful  friendship  for  a  magnificent  old  dying  lion, 
with  whom,  as  every  one  else  discovered,  it  was  ill  to 
play — Walter  Savage  Landor.  Here  it  was  the  wife 
who  looked  on  with  critical  though  kindly  sarcasm  at 
what  she  thought  her  husband's  generous  excess  of 
confidence.  Of  all  these  intimacies  and  relationships, 
however,  the  poetry  of  these  years  discloses  hardly  a 
glimpse.  His  actual  dealings  with  men  and  women 
called  out  all  his  genial  energies  of  heart  and  brain, 
but — with  one  momentous  exception — they  did  not 
touch  his  imagination. 


Ill 

Almost  as  faint  as  these  echoes  of  personal  friend- 
ship are  those  of  the  absorbing  public  interest  of  these 
years,  the  long  agony,  fitfully  relieved  by  spells  of 
desperate  and  untimely  hope,  of  the  Italian  struggle 


• 


88  BROWNING 

for  liberty.  The  Brownings  arrived  in  Florence  dur- 
ing the  lull  which  preceded  the  great  outbreak  of  1848. 
From  the  historic  u  windows  of  Casa  Guidi "  they 
looked  forth  upon  the  gentle  futilities  of  the  Tuscan 
revolution,  the  nine  days'  fight  for  Milan,  the  heroic 
adventure  of  Savoy,  and  the  apparently  final  collapse 
of  all  these  high  endeavours  on  the  field  of  Novara. 
Ten  years  of  petty  despotism  on  the  one  side,  of  u  a 
unanimity  of  despair "  on  the  other,  followed ;  and 
then  the  monotonous  tragedy  seemed  to  break  sud- 
denly into  romance,  as  the  Emperor,  "  deep  and  cold," 
marched  his  armies  over  the  Alps  for  the  Deliverance 
of  Italy. 

Of  all  this  the  Brownings  were  deeply  moved  spec- 
tators. Browning  shared  his  wife's  sympathy  with  the 
Italians  and  her  abhorrence  of  Austria,  and  it  is  not 
likely  that  he  uttered  either  sentiment  with  less 
vivacity  and  emphasis,  though  much  less  of  his  talk  is 
on  record.  u '  How  long,  O  Lord,  how  long ! ' 
Robert  kept  saying."  But  he  had  not  her  passionate 
admiration  for  France,  still  less  her  faith  in  the  Presi- 
dent-Emperor. His  less  lyric  temperament  did  not  so 
readily  harbour  unqualified  emotion  as  hers.  His 
judgment  of  character  was  cooler,  and  with  all  his 
proverbial  readiness  as  a  poet  to  provide  men  of 
equivocal  conduct  with  hypothetical  backgrounds  of 
lofty  or  blameless  motive,  he  was  in  practice  as  ex- 
empt from  amiable  illusions  as  he  was  from  narrow 
spite.  Himself  the  most  exact  and  precise  in  his 
dealings  with  the  world,  he  could  pardon  the  excesses 
and   irregularities  of  a  great  nature ;  but  sordid  self- 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  89 

seeking  under  the  mask  of  high  ideals  revolted  him. 
He  laughed  at  the  boyish  freaks  of  Landor's  magnifi- 
cent old  age,  which  irritated  even  his  large-hearted 
wife ;  but  he  could  not  forgive  Louis  Napoleon  the 
coup  d'etat,  and  when. the  liberation  of  Lombardy  was 
followed  by  the  annexation  of  Savoy  and  Nice,  the 
Emperor's  devoted  defender  had  to  listen,  without  the 
power  of  effective  retort,  to  his  biting  summary  of  the 
situation  :  "  It  was  a  great  action  ;  but  he  has  taken 
eighteenpence  for  it,  which  is  a  pity." 

A  dozen  years  later  Louis  Napoleon's  equivocal 
character  and  career  were  to  be  subjected  by  Brown- 
ing to  a  still  more  equivocal  exposition.  But  this 
sordid  trait  brought  him  within  a  category  of  "  soul " 
upon  which  Browning  did  not  yet,  in  these  glowing 
years,  readily  lavish  his  art.  A  poem  upon  Napoleon, 
which  had  occupied  him  much  during  the  winter  of 
1859  (c^-  note,  p.  165  below),  was  abandoned. 
u  Blougram's "  splendid  and  genial  duplicity  already 
attracted  him,  but  the  analysis  of  the  meretricious 
figure  of  Napoleon  became  a  congenial  problem  only 
to  that  later  Browning  of  the  'Sixties  and  'Seventies 
who  was  to  explore  the  shady  souls  of  a  Guido,  a 
Miranda,  and  a  Sludge.  On  the  other  hand,  deeply 
as  he  felt  the  sorrows  of  Italy,  it  was  no  part  of  his 
poetic  mission  to  sing  them.  The  voice  of  a  great 
community  wakened  no  lyric  note  in  him,  nor  did  his 
anger  on  its  behalf  break  into  dithyrambs.  Nation- 
ality was  not  an  effectual  motive  with  him.  He  felt 
as  keenly  as  his  wife,  or  as  Shelley  ;  but  his  feeling 
broke  out  in  fitful  allusion  or  sardonic  jest  in  the  De 


90  BROWNING 

Gustibus  or  the  Old  Pictures — not  in  a  Casa  Guidi 
Windows^  or  Songs  before  Congress^  an  Ode  to  Naples^ 
or  a  Hellas.  An  "  Ode  "  containing,  by  his  own  ac- 
count, fierce  things  about  England,  he  destroyed  after 
Villafranca.  It  is  only  in  subtle  and  original  varia- 
tions that  we  faintly  recognise  the  broad  simple  theme 
of  Italy's  struggle  for  deliverance.  The  Patriot  and 
Instans  Tyrannus  both  have  a  kind  of  nexus  with  the 
place  and  time  ;  but  the  one  is  a  caustic  satire  on 
popular  fickleness  and  the  other  a  sardonically  humor- 
ous travesty  of  persecution.  Italy  is  mentioned  in 
neither.  Both  are  far  removed  from  the  vivid  and 
sympathetic  reflection  of  the  national  struggle  which 
thrills  us  in  The  Italian  in  England  and  the  third  scene 
of  Pippa  Passes.  This  "  tyrant "  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Austrian  whom  Luigi  was  so  eager  to  assas- 
sinate, or  any  other :  whatever  in  him  belongs  to  his- 
tory has  been  permeated  through  and  through  with  the 
poet's  derisive  irony  ;  he  is  despotism  stripped  of  the 
passionate  conviction  which  may  lend  it  weight  and 
political  significance,  reduced  to  a  kind  of  sport,  like 
the  chase  of  a  butterfly,  and  contemplating  its  own 
fantastic  tricks  with  subdued  amusement. 


IV 

The  great  political  drama  enacted  in  Italy  during 
the  Brownings'  residence  there,  thus  scarcely  stirred 
the  deeper  currents  of  Browning's  imagination,  any 
more  than,  for  all  the  vivid  and  passionate  eloquence 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  9 1 

she  poured  forth  in  its  name,  it  really  touched  the 
genius  of  his  wife.  The  spell  of  Italian  scenery  was 
less  easily  evaded  than  the  abstractions  of  politics  by 
a  poet  of  his  keen  sensibility  to  light  and  colour. 
And  the  years  of  his  Italian  sojourn  certainly  left  pal- 
pable traces,  not  only,  as  is  obvious,  upon  the  land- 
scape background  which  glows  behind  his  human  fig- 
ures, but  on  his  way  of  conceiving  and  rendering  the 
whole  relation  between  Nature  and  Man.  They  did 
not,  indeed,  make  him  in  any  sense  a  Nature  poet. 
In  that  very  song  of  delight  in  "  Italy,  my  Italy," 
which  tells  how  the  things  he  best  loves  in  the  world  are 

"  a  castle  precipice-encurled 
In  a  gash  of  the  wind-grieved  Apennine," 

or  some  old  palazzo,  with  a  pointed  cypress  to  guard 
it,  by  the  opaque  blue  breadth  of  summer  sea,  the  joy 
in  mountain  and  sea  is  subtly  reinforced  at  every  point 
by  the  play  of  human  interest ;  there  are  frescoes  on 
the  crumbling  walls,  and  a  barefooted  girl  tumbles 
melons  on  the  pavement  with  news  that  the  king  has 
been  shot  at ;  art  and  politics  asserting  their  place  be- 
side Nature  in  the  heart  of  Italy's  "  old  lover."  And 
in  the  actual  life  of  the  Brownings  "  Nature  "  had  to 
be  content,  as  a  rule,  with  the  humbler  share.  Their 
chosen  abode  was  not  a  castle  in  the  Apennines  or  an 
old  crumbling  house  by  the  southern  sea,  but  an 
apartment  commanding  the  crowded  streets  of  Flor- 
ence ;  and  their  principal  absences  from  it  were  spent 
in  Rome,  in  London,  or  in  the  yet  more  congenial 
"  blaze  of  Paris."     They  delighted  certainly  to  escape 


92  BROWNING 

into  the  forest  uplands.  "  Robert  and  I  go  out  and 
lose  ourselves  in  the  woods  and  mountains,  and  sit  by 
the  waterfalls  on  the  starry  and  moonlit  nights,"  she 
wrote  from  their  high  perch  above  Lucca  in  1849; 
but  their  adventures  in  this  kind  were  on  the  whole 
like  the  noon-disport  of  the  amphibian  swimmer  in 
Fifine, — they  always  admitted  of  an  easy  retreat  to  the 
terra  firma  of  civilisation, — 

"  Land  the  solid  and  safe 

To  welcome  again  (confess !) 
When,  high  and  dry,  we  chafe 
The  body,  and  don  the  dress." 

The  Nature  Browning  knew  and  loved  was  well 
within  sight  of  humanity,  and  it  was  commonly 
brought  nearer  by  some  intrusive  vestiges  of  man's 
work  ;  the  crescent  moon  drifting  in  the  purple  twi- 
light, or  u  lamping "  between  the  cypresses,  is  seen 
over  Fiesole  or  Samminiato ;  the  "  Alpine  gorge " 
above  Lucca  has  its  ruined  chapel  and  its  mill;  the 
Roman  Campagna  has  its  tombs — u  Rome's  ghost  since 
her  decease  "  ;  the  Etrurian  hill-fastnesses  have  their 
crowning  cities  "  crowded  with  culture."  He  had 
always  had  an  alert  eye  for  the  elements  of  human 
suggestion  in  landscape.  But  his  rendering  of  land- 
scape before  the  Italian  period  was  habitually  that  of 
a  brilliant,  graphic,  but  not  deeply  interested  artist, 
wielding  an  incisive  pencil  and  an  opulent  brush,  fas- 
tening upon  every  bit  of  individual  detail,  and  some- 
times, as  in  the  admirable  Englishman  in  Italy,  recall- 
ing Wordsworth's  indignant  reproof  of  the  great  fel- 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  93 

low-artist — Scott — who  "  made  an  inventory  of  Na- 
ture's charms. "  This  hard  objective  brilliance  does 
not  altogether  disappear  from  the  work  of  his  Italian 
period.  But  it  tends  to  give  way  to  a  strangely  subtle 
interpenetration  of  the  visible  scene  with  the  passion 
of  the  seeing  soul.  Nature  is  not  more  alive,  but  her 
life  thrills  and  palpitates  in  subtler  relation  with  the 
life  of  man.  The  author  of  Men  and  Women  is  a 
greater  poet  of  Nature  than  the  author  of  the  Lyrics 
and  Romances^  because  he  is,  also,  a  greater  poet  of 
"  Soul  "  ;  for  his  larger  command  of  soul-life  embraces 
just  those  moods  of  spiritual  passion  which  beget  the 
irradiated  and  transfigured  Nature  for  which,  since 
Wordsworth,  poetry  has  continually  striven  to  find 
expression.  Browning's  subtler  feeling  for  Nature 
sprang  from  his  profounder  insight  into  love.  Love 
was  his  way  of  approach,  as  it  was  eminently  not 
Wordsworth's,  to  the  transfigured  Nature  which 
Wordsworth  first  disclosed.  It  is  habitually  lovers 
who  have  these  visions, — all  that  was  mystical  in 
Browning's  mind  attaching  itself,  in  fact,  in  some  way 
to  his  ideas  of  love.  To  the  Two  in  the  Campagna 
its  primeval  silence  grows  instinct  with  passion,  and 
its  peace  with  joy, — the  joy  of  illimitable  space  and 
freedom,  alluring  yet  mocking  the  finite  heart  that 
yearns.  To  the  lovers  of  the  Alpine  gorge  the  old 
woods,  heaped  and  dim,  that  hung  over  their  troth- 
plighting,  mysteriously  drew  them  together ;  the  mo- 
ment that  broke  down  the  bar  between  soul  and  soul 
also  breaking  down,  as  it  were,  the  bar  between  man 
and  nature : 


94  BROWNING 

"  The  forests  had  done  it ;  there  they  stood ; 

We  caught  for  a  moment  the  powers  at  play : 
They  had  mingled  us  so,  for  once  and  good, 

Their  work  was  done,  we  might  go  or  stay, 
They  relapsed  to  their  ancient  mood." 

Such  "  moments  "  were,  in  fact,  for  Browning  as  well 
as  for  his  lovers,  rare  and  fitful  exceptions  to  the  gen- 
eral nonchalance  of  Nature  towards  human  affairs. 
The  powers  did  good,  as  they  did  evil,  u  at  play  "  ; 
intervening  with  a  kind  of  cynical  or  ironical  detach- 
J  ment  (like  Jaques  plighting  Touchstone  and  Audrey) 
in  an  alien  affair  of  hearts.  A  certain  eerie  playful- 
ness is  indeed  a  recurring  trait  in  Browning's  highly 
individual  feeling  about  Nature ;  the  uncanny  playful- 
ness of  a  wild  creature  of  boundless  might  only  half 
intelligible  to  man,  which  man  contemplates  with 
mingled  joy,  wonder,  and  fear.  Joy,  when  the  brown 
old  Earth  wears  her  good  gigantic  smile,  on  an  au- 
tumn morning  ;  wonder,  when  he  watches  the  "  mira- 
cles wrought  in  play "  in  the  teeming  life  of  the 
Campagna ;  fear,  when,  on  a  hot  August  midnight, 
Earth  tosses  stormily  on  her  couch.  And  all  these 
notes  of  feelings  are  struck,  with  an  intensity  and  a 
boldness  of  invention  which  make  it  unique  among 
his  writings,  in  the  great  romantic  legend  of  Childe 
Roland.  What  the  Ancient  Mariner  is  in  the  poetry 
of  the  mysterious  terrors  and  splendours  of  the  sea, 
that  Childe  Roland  is  in  the  poetry  of  bodeful  horror, 
of  haunted  desolation,  of  waste  and  plague,  ragged 
distortion,  and  rotting  ugliness  in  landscape.  The 
Childe,  like  the  Mariner,  advances  through  an  atmos- 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  95 

phere  and  scenery  of  steadily  gathering  menace ;  the 
"  starved  ignoble  "  Nature,  "  peevish  and  dejected  " 
among  her  scrub  of  thistle  and  dock,  grows  malignant ; 
to  the  barren  waste  succeed  the  spiteful  little  river 
with  its  drenched  despairing  willows,  the  blood-tram- 
pled mire  and  wrecked  torture-engine,  the  poisonous 
herbage  and  palsied  oak,  and  finally  the  mountains, 
ignoble  as  the  plain — "  mere  ugly  heights  and  heaps," 
ranged  round  the  deadly  den  of  the  Dark  Tower. 
But  Browning's  horror-world  differs  from  Coleridge's 
in  the  pervading  sense  that  the  powers  which  control 
its  issues  are  "  at  play."  The  catastrophe  is  not  the 
less  tragic  for  that ;  but  the  heroic  knight  is  not  a 
culprit  who  has  provoked  the  vengeance  of  his  pur- 
suers, but  a  quarry  whose  course  they  follow  with 
grim  half-suppressed  laughter  as  he  speeds  into  the 
trap.  The  hoary  cripple  cannot  hide  his  malicious 
glee,  the  "  stiff  blind  horse  "  is  as  grotesque  as  he  is 
woeful,  the  dreary  day  itself,  as  it  sinks,  shoots  one 
grim  red  leer  at  the  doomed  knight  as  he  sets  forth ; 
in  the  penury  and  inertness  of  the  wasted  plain  he 
sees  "  grimace  "  ;  the  mountains  fight  like  bulls  or 
doze  like  dotards ;  and  the  Dark  Tower  itself  is 
"  round  and  squat,"  built  of  brown  stone,  a  mere  anti- 
climax to  romance ;  while  round  it  lie  the  sportsmen 
assembled  to  see  the  end  — 

"  The  hills,  like  giants  at  a  hunting,  lay 
Chin  upon  hand,  to  see  the  game  at  bay." 


96  BROWNING 

V 

But  the  scenery  of  Italy,  with  all  its  appeals  of 
picturesque  outline  and  glowing  colour,  interested 
Browning  less  than  its  painting,  sculpture,  and  music. 
"  Nature  I  loved,  and  after  Nature,  Art,"  Landor 
declared  in  one  of  his  stately  epitaphs  on  himself; 
Browning  would,  in  this  sense  of  the  terms  at  least, 
have  inverted  their  order.  Casa  Guidi  windows  com- 
manded a  view,  not  only  of  revolutionary  throngs, 
but  of  the  facade  of  the  Pitti — a  fact  of  at  least  equal 
significance.  From  the  days  of  his  boyish  pilgrimages 
to  the  Dulwich  Gallery  across  the  Camberwell  mead- 
ows, he  had  been  an  eager  student  and  critic  of  paint- 
ing ;  curious,  too,  if  not  yet  expert  in  all  the  processes 
and  technicalities  of  the  studio.  He  judged  pictures 
with  the  eye  of  a  skilful  draughtsman  ;  and  two  rapid 
journeys  had  given  him  some  knowledge  of  the  Italian 
galleries.  Continuous  residence  among  the  chief 
glories  of  the  brush  and  chisel  did  not  merely  multi- 
ply artistic  incitement  and  appeal;  it  brought  the 
whole  world  of  art  into  more  vital  touch  with  his 
imaginative  activity.  It  would  be  hard  to  say  that 
there  is  any  definite  change  in  his  view  of  art,  but  its 
problems  grow  more  alluring  to  him,  and  its  images 
more  readily  waylay  and  capture  his  passing  thought. 
The  artist  as  such  becomes  a  more  dominant  figure 
in  his  hierarchy  of  spiritual  workers  ;  while  Browning 
himself  betrays  a  new  self-consciousness  of  his  own 
function  as  an  artist  in  verse  ;  conceiving,  for  in- 
stance, his  consummate  address  to  his  wife  as  an  artist's 
way  of  solving  a  perplexity  which  only  an  artist  could 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  97 

feel,  that  of  finding  unique  expression  for  the  unique 
love. 

"  He  who  works  in  fresco,  steals  a  hair-brush, 
Curbs  the  liberal  hand,  subservient  proudly, 
Cramps  his  spirit,  crowds  its  all  in  little, 
Makes  a  strange  art  of  an  art  familiar, 
Fills  his  lady's  missal-marge  with  flowerets ; 
He  who  blows  thro'  bronze  may  breathe  thro'  silver, 
Fitly  serenade  a  slumbrous  princess ; 
He  who  writes  may  write  for  once,  as  I  do." 

Browning  is  distinguished  among  the  poets  to  whom 
art  meant  nmqh  by  the  prominence  with  him  of  the  . 
specifically  artist's  point  of  view.  He  cared  for  pic- 
tures, or  for  music,  certainly,  as  clues  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  human  life,  hints  of  "  the  absolute  truth  of 
things  "  which  the  sensible  world  veils  and  the  senses 
miss.  But  he  cared  for  them  also,  and  yet  more,  as 
expressions  of  the  artist's  own  "  love  of  loving,  rage  - 
of  knowing,  seeing,  feeling  "  that  absolute  truth.  And 
he  cared  for  them  also  and  not  less,  without  regard  to 
anything  they  expressed,  as  simple  outflows  of  vitality,  3 
however  grotesque  or  capricious.  His  own  eye  and 
ear  continually  provoked  his  hand  to  artistic  experi- 
ments and  activities.  During  the  last  years  in  Italy 
his  passion  for  modelling  even  threatened  to  divert 
him  from  poetry  ;  and  his  wife  playfully  lamented 
that  the  "  poor  lost  soul  "  produced  only  casts,  which 
he  broke  on  completion,  and  no  more  Men  and 
Women.  And  his  own  taste  in  art  drew  him,  no- 
toriously, to  work  in  which  the  striving  hand  was 
palpable, — whether  it  was  a  triumphant  tour  de  force 


98  BROWNING 

like  Cellini's  Perseus,  in  the  Loggia — their  daily  ban- 
quet in  the  early  days  at  Florence  ;  or  the  half-articu- 
late utterances  of  "  the  Tuscan's  early  art,"  like  those 
"  Pre-Giotto  pictures  "  which  surrounded  them  in  the 
salon  of  Casa  Guidi,  "  quieting  "  them  if  they  were 
over  busy,  as  Mrs.  Browning  beautifully  says,1  more 
perhaps  in  her  own  spirit  than  in  her  husband's. 
y  Almost  all  Browning's  finest  poems  of  painting  be- 
long to  these  Italian  years,  and  were  enshrined  in  Men 
and  Women.  They  all  illustrate  more  or  less  his 
characteristic  preoccupation  with  the  artist's  point  of 
view,  and  also,  what  is  new,  the  point  of  view  of  par- 
ticular and  historical  artists, — a  Guercino,  an  Andrea 
del  Sarto,  a  Giotto,  a  Lippo  Lippi.  Even  where  he 
seems  to  write  under  the  peculiar  spell  of  his  wife,  as 
in  the  Guardian  Angel,  this  trait  asserts  itself.  They 
had  spent  three  glowing  August  days  of  1848  at 
Fano,  and  thrice  visited  the  painting  by  Guercino 
there, — "  to  drink  its  beauty  to  our  soul's  content." 
Mrs.  Browning  wrote  of  the  u  divine "  picture. 
Browning  entered,  with  a  sympathy  perhaps  the  more 
intimate  that  his  own  "  angel  "  was  with  him^and  the 
memory  of  an  old  friend  peculiarly  near,  into  sympathy 
with  the  guardian  angel ;  but  with  one  of  his  abrupt 
turns  he  passes  into  the  world  of  the  studio,  telling  us 
how  he  has  written  for  the  sake  of  "  dear  Guercino's 
fame,"  because  he  "  did  not  work  thus  earnestly  at 
all  times,  and  has  endured  some  wrong."  With  all 
this,  however,  the  Guardian  Angel  is  one  of  the  few 
pieces  left  by  Browning  which  do  not  instantly  dis- 
1  Letters  of  E.  B.  B.,\\.  199. 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  99 

cover  themselves  as  his.  His  typical  children  are 
well-springs  of  spiritual  influence,  scattering  the  aerial 
dew  of  quickening  song  upon  a  withered  world,  or 
taking  God's  ear  with  their  "  little  human  praise." 
T*he  spirituality  of  this  child  is  of  a  different  temper, 
— the  submissive  "  lamblike"  temper  which  is  fulfilled 
in  quiescence  and  disturbed  by  thought. 

What  is  here  a  mere  flash  of  good-natured  cham- 
pionship becomes  in  the  great  monologue  of  Andrea 
del  Sarto  an  illuminating  compassion.  Compassion, 
be  it  noted,  far  less  for  the  husband  of  an  unfaithful 
wife  than  for  the  great  painter  whose  genius  was 
tethered  to  a  soulless  mate.  The  situation  appealed 
profoundly  to  Browning,  and  Andrea's  monologue  is 
one  of  his  most  consummate  pieces  of  dramatic  char- 
acterisation. It  is  a  study  of  spiritual  paralysis, 
achieved  without  the  least  resort  to  the  rhetorical  con- 
ventions which  permit  poetry  to  express  men's  silence 
with  speech  and  their  apathy  with  song.  Tennyson's 
Lotos-eaters  chant  their  world-weariness  in  choral 
strains  of  almost  too  magnificent  afflatus  to  be  dra- 
matically proper  on  the  lips  of  spirits  so  resigned. 
Andrea's  spiritual  lotus-eating  has  paralysed  the  nerve 
of  passion  in  him,  and  made  him  impotent  to  utter  the 
lyrical  cry  which  his  fate  seems  to  crave.  He  is  half 
"  incapable  of  his  own  distress  "  ;  his  strongest  emo- 
tions are  a  flitting  hope  or  a  momentary  pang,  quickly 
dissolved  into  the  ground-tone  of  mournful  yet  serene 
contemplation,  which  seems  to  float  ghostlike  in  the 
void  between  grief  and  joy.  Reproach  turns  to  grate- 
ful  acquiescence   on  his   lips  ;  the  sting  of  blighted 


100  BROWNING 

genius  is  instantly  annulled  by  the  momentary  en- 
chantment of  her  smile,  whose  worth  he  knows  too 
well  and  remembers  too  soon  :  — 

"  And  you  smile  indeed ! 
This  hour  has  been  an  hour !     Another  smile  ? 
If  you  would  sit  thus  by  me  every  night 
I  should  work  better,  do  you  comprehend  ? 
I  mean  that  I  should  earn  more,  give  you  more." 

The  tragedy  is  for  us,  not  for  him  :  he  regrets  little, 
and  would  change  still  less.  The  "  silver-grey " 
lights  of  dreamy  autumn  eve  were  never  with  more 
delicate  insight  rendered  in  terms  of  soul. 

Suddenly  these  autumnal  half-tones  give  way  to 
the  flash  of  torches  in  the  fragrant  darkness  of  an 
Italian  night.  There  is  a  scurry  of  feet  along  a  dark 
alley,  a  scuffle  at  the  end,  and  the  genial  rotundity  of 
Brother  Lippo  Lippi's  face,  impudent,  brilliant,  in- 
suppressible,  leers  into  the  torchlight.  Fra  Lippo 
Lippi  is  not  less  true  and  vivacious  than  the  Andrea, 
if  less  striking  as  an  example  of  Browning's  dramatic 
power.  Sarto  is  a  great  poetic  creation  ;  Browning's 
own  robust  temperament  provided  hardly  any  aid  in 
delineating  the  emaciated  soul  whose  gifts  had  thinned 
down  to  a  morbid  perfection  of  technique.  But  this 
vigorous  human  creature,  with  the  teeming  brain,  and 
the  realist  eye,  and  the  incorrigible  ineptitude  for  the 
restraints  of  an  insincere  clerical  or  other  idealism, 
was  a  being  to  which  Browning's  heart  went  out; 
and  he  even  makes  him  the  mouthpiece  of  literary 
ideas,  which   his   own   portrait   as   here  drawn  aptly 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  101 

exemplifies.  There  is  not  much  "  soul "  in  Lippo, 
but  he  has  the  hearty  grasp  of  common  things,  of 
the  world  in  its  business  and  its  labour  and  its  sport 
and  its  joys,  which  "  edifies  "  men  more  than  artificial 
idealities  designed  expressly  to  "beat  nature."  He 
"  lends  his  mind  out  "  and  finds  the  answering  mind 
in  other  men  instead  of  imposing  one  from  with- 
out : — 

"  This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 
Nor  blank ;  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good : 
To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink." 

"  Ay,  but,"  objects  the  Prior,  "  you  do  not  instigate  to 
prayer  !  "  And  it  is  the  prior  and  his  system  which 
for  Lippi  stand  in  the  place  of  Andrea's  soulless  wife. 
Lucrezia's  illusive  beauty  lured  his  soul  to  its  doom  ; 
and  Lippo,  forced,  as  a  child  of  eight,  to  renounce 
the  world  and  put  on  the  cassock  he  habitually  dis- 
graced, triumphantly  cast  off*  the  incubus  of  a  sham 
spirituality  which  only  tended  to  obscure  what  was 
most  spiritual  in  himself.  He  was  fortunate  in  the 
poet  who  has  drawn  his  portrait  so  superbly  in  his 
sitter's  own  style. 

These  two  monologues  belong  to  the  most  finished 
achievements  of  Browning.  But  we  should  miss 
much  of  the  peculiar  quality  of  his  mind,  as  well  as 
a  vivid  glimpse  into  the  hope-and-fear-laden  atmos- 
phere of  Tuscany  in  the  early  'Fifties,  if  we  had  not 
that  quaint  heterogeneous  causerie  called  Old  Pictures 
in  Florence.  There  is  passion  in  its  grotesqueness 
and  method  in  its  incoherence  ;  for  the  old  painters, 


102  BROWNING 

whose  apologies  he  is  ostensibly  writing,  with  their 
imperfect  achievement  and  their  insuppressible 
idealism,  sounded  a  congenial  note  to  men  whose 
eyes  were  bent  incessantly  upon  the  horizon  wait- 
ing for  the  invisible  to  come  into  play,  and  Florence 
looked  for  her  completion  as  Giotto's  unfinished 
campanile  for  its  spire. 

If  Italy  deepened  Browning's  hold  upon  the 
problems  of  painting,  it  witnessed  the  beginnings 
of  his  equally  characteristic  achievement  in  the 
kindred  poetry  of  music.  Not  that  his  Italian  life 
can  have  brought  any  notable  access  of  musical 
impressions  to  a  man  who  had  grown  up  within 
easy  reach  of  London  concerts  and  operas.  But 
England  was  a  land  in  which  music  was  performed ; 
Italy  was  a  land  in  which  it  was  made.  Verdi's 
u  worst  opera  "  could  be  heard  in  many  places  ;  but 
in  Florence  the  knowing  spectator  might  see  Verdi 
himself,  at  its  close, 

"  Look  through  all  the  roaring  and  the  wreaths 
Where  sits  Rossini  patient  in  his  stall." 

Italian  music,  with  its  facile  melody  and  its  relative 
poverty  of  ideas,  could  not  find  so  full  a  response  in 
Browning's  nature  as  Italian  painting.  It  had  had  its 
own  gracious  and  tender  youth ;  and  Palestrina, 
whom  he  contrasts  with  the  mountainous  fuguists 
of  "  Saxe-Gotha "  and  elsewhere,  probably  had  for 
him  the  same  kind  of  charm  as  the  early  painters  of 
Florence.  Out  of  that  "  infancy,"  however,  there 
had  arisen  no  "  titanically  infantine  "  Michelangelo, 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY 


103 


but  a  race  of  accomplished  petits  maitres,  whose  char- 
acteristic achievement  was  the  opera  of  the  rococo 
age.  A  Goldsmith  or  a  Sterne  can  make  the  light 
songs  of  their  contemporaries  eloquent  even  to  us  of 
gracious  amenities  and  cultivated  charm ;  but  Brown- 
ing, with  the  eternal  April  in  his  heart  and  brain, 
heard  in  the  stately  measures  it  danced  to,  only  the 
eloquence  of  a  dirge,  penetrated  with  the  sense  of  the 
mortality  of  such  joy  as  theirs.  Byron  had  sung 
gaily  of  the  gaieties  of  Venice;  but  the  vivacious 
swing  of  Beppo  was  less  to  Browning's  mind  than 
the  "  cold  music  "  of  Baldassare  Galuppi,  who  made 
his  world  dance  to  the  strains  of  its  own  requiem, 
and  fall  upon  dreamy  suggestions  of  decay  in  the  very 
climax  of  the  feast : — 

"  What  ?    Those    lesser  thirds  so   plaintive,   sixths    diminished, 

sigh  on  sigh, 
Told    them     something?      Those    suspensions,    those    solutions 

— «  Must  we  die  ?  ' 
Those  commiserating  sevenths — *  Life  might  last !     We  can  but 

try!"' 

The  musician  himself  has  no  such  illusion ;  but  his 
music  is  only  a  more  bitter  echo  : — 

"  Dust  and  ashes,  dead  and  done  with,  Venice  spent  what  Venice 

earned : 
The  soul,  doubtless,  is  immortal — where  a  soul  can  be  discerned." 

And  so  the  poet,  in  the  self-consciousness  of  his 
immense  vitality,  sweeps  into  the  limbo  of  oblivion 
these  dusty  debris  of  the  past,  with  no  nearer  approach 


104  BROWNING 

to  the  romantic  regret  of  a  Malory  for  the  glories  of 
old  time  or  to  Villon's  awestruck  contemplation  of  the 
mysterious  evanishment  of  storied  beauty,  than  the 
half-contemptuous  echo  — 

" « Dust  and  ashes ! '     So  you  creak  it,  and  I  want  the  heart  to 

scold. 
Dear  dead  women,  with  such  hair  too — what's  become  of  all  the 

gold 
Used  to  hang  and  brush  their  bosoms  ?     I  feel  chilly  and  grown 

old." 

In  the  other  music-poem  of  the  Italian  time  it  is 
not  difficult  to  detect  a  kindred  mood  beneath  the 
half-disguise  of  rollicking  rhymes  and  whimsical  com- 
parisons. Once  more  Browning  seems  preoccupied 
with  that  in  music  which  lends  expression  to  a  soul- 
less animation,  a  futile  and  aimless  vivacity.  Only 
here  it  is  the  vivacity  of  the  schools,  not  of  the  ball- 
room. Yet  some  lines  seem  a  very  echo  of  that  hol- 
low joyless  mirth,  for  ever  revolving  on  itself: — 

"  Est  fuga,  volvitur  rota ; 

On  we  drift :  where  looms  the  dim  port  ?  " 

The  intertwining  and  conflicting  melodies  of  the  fugue 
echo  the  impotent  strife  of  jangling  tongues,  "affirm- 
ing, denying,  holding,  risposting,  subjoining," — the 
shuttle  play  of  comment  and  gloze  shrouding  the  light 
of  nature  and  truth  : — 

"  Over  our  heads  truth  and  nature  — 

Still  our  life's  zigzags  and  dodges, 
Ins  and  outs,  weaving  a  new  legislature  — 

God's  gold  just  shining  its  last  where  that  lodges, 
Palled  beneath  man's  usurpature." 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  IO5 

But  Browning  was  at  heart  too  alive  to  the  charm  of 
this  shuttle-play,  of  these  zigzags  and  dodges, — of  zig- 
zags and  dodges  of  every  kind, — not  to  feel  the  irony  of 
the  attack  upon  this  "  stringing  of  Nature  through  cob- 
webs "  ;  when  the  organist  breaks  out,  as  the  fugue's 
intricacy  grows,  "  But  where's  music,  the  dickens  ?  " 
we  hear  Browning  mocking  the  indignant  inquiries  of 
similar  purport  so  often  raised  by  his  readers.  Master 
Hugues  could  only  have  been  written  by  one  who,  with 
a  childlike  purity  of  vision  for  truth  and  nature,  for  the 
shining  of  "  God's  gold "  and  the  glimpses  of  the 
"  earnest  eye  of  heaven,"  had  also  a  keen  perception 
and  instinctive  delight  in  every  filament  of  the  web  of 
human  "  legislature." 

This  double  aspect  of  Browning's  poetic  nature  is 
vividly  reflected  in  the  memorable  essay  on  Shelley 
which  he  wrote  at  Paris  in  185 1,  as  an  introduction  to 
a  series  of  letters  since  shown  to  have  been  forged. 
The  essay — unfortunately  not  included  in  his  Works — 
is  a  document  of  first-rate  importance  for  the  mind  of 
Browning  in  the  midst  of  his  greatest  time ;  it  is  also 
by  far  the  finest  appreciation  of  Shelley  which  had  yet 
appeared.  He  saw  in  Shelley  one  who,  visionary  and 
subjective  as  he  was,  had  solved  the  problem  which 
confronts  every  idealist  who  seeks  to  grasp  the  visible 
world  in  its  concrete  actuality.  To  Browning  himself 
that  problem  presented  itself  in  a  form  which  tasked 
far  more  severely  the  resources  of  poetic  imagination, 
in  proportion  as  actuality  bodied  itself  forth  to  his  alert 
senses  in  more  despotic  grossness  and  strength.  Shel- 
ley is   commonly  thought  to  have  evaded  this  task 


106  BROWNING 

altogether, — building  his  dream-world  of  cloud  and 
cavern  loveliness  remote  from  anything  we  know.  It 
is  Browning,  the  most  "  actual "  of  poets,  who  in- 
sisted, half  a  century  ago,  on  the  "  practicality  "  of 
Shelley, — insisted,  as  it  is  even  now  not  superfluous  to 
insist,  on  the  fearless  and  direct  energy  with  which  he 
strove  to  root  his  intuitions  in  experience.  "  His 
noblest  and  predominating  characteristic,"  he  urges,  to 
quote  these  significant  words  once  more,  "  is  his 
simultaneous  perception  of  Power  and  Love  in  the 
absolute,  and  of  Beauty  and  Good  in  the  concrete, 
while  he  throws,  from  his  poet's  station  between  both, 
swifter,  subtler,  and  more  numerous  films  for  the  con- 
nection of  each  with  each  than  have  been  thrown  by 
any  modern  artificer  of  whom  I  have  knowledge} 
proving  how,  as  he  says  — 

"  *  The  spirit  of  the  worm  beneath  the  sod 

In  love  and  worship  blends  itself  with  God.'  " 

Browning  has  nowhere  else  expounded  so  fully  his 
ideas  about  the  aims  of  his  own  art.  It  lay  in  the 
peculiar  "  dramatic  "  quality  of  his  mind  to  express 
himself  freely  only  in  situations  not  his  own.  Hence, 
while  he  does  not  altogether  avoid  the  poet  as  a  char- 
acter, his  poets  are  drawn  with  a  curious  externality 
and  detachment.  It  is  in  his  musicians,  his  painters, 
his  grammarians,  that  the  heart  and  passion  of  Brown- 
ing the  poet  really  live.  He  is  the  poet  of  musicians 
and  of  painters,  the  poet  of  lawyers  and  physicians 
and  Rabbis,  and  of  scores  of  callings  which  never  had 
a  poet  before ;  but  he  is  not  the  poets'  poet.     In  the 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  IO7 

Transcendentalism,  however,  after  tilting  with  gay  irony 
at  the  fault  of  over-much  argument  in  poetry,  which 
the  world  ascribed  to  his  own,  he  fixes  in  a  splendid 
image  the  magic  which  it  fitfully  yet  consummately 
illustrates.  The  reading  public  which  entertained  any 
opinion  about  him  at  all  was  inclined  to  take  him  for 
another  Boehme,  "  with  a  tougher  book  and  subtler 
meanings  of  what  roses  say."  A  few  knew  that 
they  had  to  deal,  not  less,  with  a  "  stout  Mage  like 
him  of  Halberstadt,"  who 

"  with  a  '  look  you '  vents  a  brace  of  rhymes, 
And  in  there  breaks  the  sudden  rose  herself, 
Over  us,  under,  round  us  every  side." 

The  portrait  of  the  poet  of  Valladolid,  on  the  other 
hand  {How  it  Strikes  a  Contemporary),  is  not  so* much 
a  study  of  a  poet  as  of  popular  misconception  and 
obtuseness.  A  grotesquely  idle  legend  of  the  habits 
of  the  "  Corregidor"  flourishes  among  the  good  folks 
of  Valladolid  ;  the  speaker  himself,  who  desires  to  do 
him  justice,  is  a  plain,  shrewd,  but  unimaginative  ob- 
server (u  I  never  wrote  a  line  of  verse,  did  you  ?»'), 
and  makes  us  acquainted  with  everything  but  the  in- 
ner nature  of  the  man.  We  see  the  corregidor  in  the 
streets,  in  his  chamber,  at  his  frugal  supper  and  "de- 
cent cribbage  "  with  his  maid,  but  never  at  his  verse. 
We  see  the  alert  objective  eye  of  this  man  with  the 
"  scrutinising  hat,"  who 

"  stood  and  watched  the  cobbler  at  his  trade,     .     .    . 
If  any  beat  a  horse,  you  felt  he  saw, 
If  any  cursed  a  woman,  he  took  note," — 


108  BROWNING 

and  all  this,  for  Browning,  went  to  the  making  of  the 
poet,  but  we  get  no  inkling  of  the  process  itself. 
Browning  had,  in  his  obscure  as  in  his  famous  days, 
peculiar  opportunities  of  measuring  the  perversities  of 
popular  repute.  Later  on,  in  the  heyday  of  his  re- 
nown, he  chaffed  its  critical  dispensers  in  his  most 
uproarious  vein  in  Pacchiarotto.  The  Popularity  stan- 
zas present  us  with  a  theory  of  it  conveyed  in  that 
familiar  manner  of  mingled  poetry  and  grotesqueness 
which  was  one  of  the  obstacles  to  his  own. 

There  is,  however,  among  these  fifty  men  and 
women  one  true  and  sublime  poet, — the  dying 
"  Grammarian,"  who  applies  the  alchemy  of  a  lofty 
imagination  to  the  dry  business  of  verbal  erudition. 

"  He  said,  •  What's  time  ?     Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes ! 
Man  has  Forever.' " 

This  is  one  of  the  half-dozen  lyrics  which  enshrine 
in  noble  and  absolutely  individual  form  the  central 
core  of  Browning's  passion  and  thought.  Even  the 
verse,  with  its  sequence  of  smooth-flowing  iambics 
broken  by  the  leap  of  the  dactyl,  and  the  difficult 
double  rhyme,  sustains  the  mood  of  victorious  but  not 
lightly  won  serenity  of  soul — "  too  full  for  sound  and 
foam."  It  is,  among  songs  over  the  dead,  what  Rabbi 
ben  Ezra  and  Prospice  are  among  the  songs  which  face 
and  grapple  with  death ;  the  fittest  requiem  to  follow 
such  deaths  as  those.  Like  Ben  Ezra,  the  Gram- 
marian "trusts  death,"  and  stakes  his  life  on  the 
trust :  — 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  IO9 

*  He  ventured  neck  or  nothing — heaven's  success 
Found,  or  earth's  failure  : 
*  Wilt  thou  trust  death  or  not  ?  '     He  answered, «  Yes  : 
Hence  with  life's  pale  lure ! '  " 

To  ordinary  eyes  he  spends  his  days  grovelling  among 
the  dust  and  dregs  of  erudition  ;  but  it  is  the  grovelling 
of  a  builder  at  work  upon  a  fabric  so  colossally 
planned  that  life  is  fitly  spent  in  laying  the  founda- 
tions. He  was  made  in  the  large  mould  of  the  gods, 
— born  with  "  thy  face  and  throat,  Lyric  Apollo," — 
and  the  disease  which  crippled  and  silenced  him  in 
middle  life  could  only  alter  the  tasks  on  which  he 
wreaked  his  mind.  And  now  that  he  is  dead,  he 
passes,  as  by  right,  to  the  fellowship  of  the  universe- 
of  the  sublime  things  of  nature. 

"  Here — here's  his  place,  where  meteors  shoot,  clouds  form, 

Lightnings  are  loosened, 
Stars  come  and  go !     Let  joy  break  with  the  storm, 

Peace  let  the  dew  send ! 
Lofty  designs  must  close  in  like  effects : 

Loftily  lying, 
Leave  him — still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects, 

Living  and  dying." 

VI 

The  Grammarian's  Funeral  achieves,  in  the  terms 
and  with  the  resources  of  Browning's  art,  the  problem 
of  which  he  saw  the  consummate  master  in  Shelley, 
— that  of  throwing  "  films  "  for  the  connexion  of 
Power  and  Love  in  the  abstract  with  Beauty  and 
Good  in  the  concrete,  and  finding  a  link  between  the 
lowliest   service   or  worship   and  the  spirit  of  God. 


IIO  BROWNING 

Such  a  conception  of  a  poet's  crowning  glory  implied 
a  peculiarly  close  relation  in  Browning's  view  be- 
tween poetry  and  religion,  and  in  particular  with  the 
religion  which,  above  all  others,  glorified  the  lowly. 
Here  lay,  in  short,  the  supreme  worth  for  him  of  the 
Christian  idea.  "  The  revelation  of  God  in  Christ " 
was  for  him  the  consummate  example  of  that  union 
of  divine  love  with  the  world — "  through  all  the  web 
of  Being  blindly  wove  " — which  Shelley  had  contem- 
plated in  the  radiant  glow  of  his  poetry ;  accepted  by 
the  reason,  as  he  wrote  a  few  years  later,  it  solved 
u  all  problems  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it."  To  that 
solution  Shelley  seemed  to  Browning  to  be  on  the 
way,  and  his  incomplete  grasp  of  it  appealed  to  him 
more  powerfully  than  did  the  elaborate  dogmatisms 
professedly  based  upon  it.  Shelley  had  mistaken 
"  Churchdom  "  for  Christianity ;  but  he  was  on  the 
way,  Browning  was  convinced,  to  become  a  Christian 
himself.  "I  shall  say  what  I  think, — had  Shelley 
lived  he  would  have  finally  ranged  himself  with  the 
Christians." 

This  emphatic  declaration  is  of  great  importance  for 
Browning's  intellectual  history.  He  may  have  over- 
looked the  immense  barriers  which  must  have  always 
divided  Shelley  from  the  Christian  world  of  his  time ; 
he  may  have  overlooked  also  that  the  Christian 
thought  of  our  time  has  in  some  important  points 
"  ranged  itself  with  "  Shelley  ;  so  that  the  Christianity 
which  he  might  finally  have  adopted  would  have  been 
sufficiently  unlike  that  which  he  assailed.  But  it  is 
clear  that  for  Browning  himself  the  essence  of  Chris- 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  III 

tianity  lay  at  this  time  in  something  not  very  remote 
from  what  he  revered  as  the  essence  of  Shelleyism — 
a  corollary,  as  it  were,  ultimately  implicit  in  his 
thought. 

It  was  thus  a  deeper  poetical  rather  than  a  religious 
or  doctrinal  interest  which  drew  Browning  in  these 
Italian  years,  again  and  again  to  seek  his  revealing 
experiences  of  souls  amid  the  eddies  and  convulsions, 
the  exultations  and  the  agonies,  brought  into  the  world 
by  the  amazing  "  revelation  of  God  in  Christ."  It  is 
true  that  we  nowhere  approach  this  focus  of  interest, 
that  we  have  no  glimpse,  through  Browning's  art,  how 
that  u  revelation  "  shaped  itself  in  the  first  disciples, 
far  less  of  Christ  himself.  But  that  was  at  no  time 
Browning's  way  of  bringing  to  expression  what  he 
deeply  cared  for.  He  would  not  trumpet  forth  truth 
in  his  own  person,  or  blazon  it  through  the  lips  of  the 
highest  recognised  authority;  he  let  it  struggle  up 
through  the  baffling  density,  or  glimmer  through  the 
conflicting  persuasions  of  alien  minds,  and  break  out 
in  cries  of  angry  wonder  or  involuntary  recognition. 
And  nowhere  is  this  method  carried  further  than  in 
the  Christian  poems  of  the  Italian  time.  The  su- 
preme musicians  and  painters  he  avoids,  but  Fra  Lippo 
Lippi  and  Master  Hugues  belong  at  least  to  the  crafts 
whose  secrets  they  expound ;  while  the  Christian  idea 
is  set  in  a  borrowed  light  caught  from  the  souls  of 
men  outside  the  Christian  world — an  Arab  physician, 
a  Greek  poet,  a  Jewish  shepherd  or  rabbi,  or  from 
Christians  yet  farther  from  the  centre  than  these,  like 
Blougram   and  the  Abbe  Deodaet.     In  method  as  in 


112  BROWNING 

conception  these  pieces  are  among  the  most  Brown- 
ingesque  things  that  Browning  ever  wrote.  It  is 
clear,  however,  that  while  his  way  of  handling  these 
topics  is  absolutely  his  own,  his  peculiar  concern  with 
them  is  new.  The  Karshish,  the  Cleon,  and  the 
Blougram  have  no  prototype  or  parallel  among  the 
poems  of  Browning's  previous  periods.  In  the  early 
Dramatic  Lyrics  and  Romances,  and  in  the  plays, 
there  is  exquisite  rendering  of  religion,  and  also  of 
irreligion ;  but  the  religion  is  just  the  simple  faith  of 
Pippa  or  of  Theocrite  that  "  God's  in  his  world  "  ;  and 
the  irreligion  is  the  Humanist  paganism  of  St.  Praxed's, 
not  so  much  hostile  to  Christianity  as  unconscious  of 
it.  No  single  poem  written  before  1850  shows  that 
acute  interest  in  the  problems  of  Christian  faith  which 
constantly  emerges  in  the  work  of  this  and  the  follow- 
ing years.  Saul,  which  might  be  regarded  as  signally 
refuting  this  view,  strikingly  confirms  it ;  the  David 
of  the  first  nine  sections,  which  alone  were  produced 
in  1845,  Deing  tne  naive,  devout  child,  brother  of 
Pippa  and  of  Theocrite ;  the  evolution  of  this  harp- 
ing shepherd-boy  into  the  illuminated  prophet  of 
Christ  was  the  splendid  achievement  of  the  later 
years.1  And  to  all  this  more  acutely  Christian  work 
the  Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day  (1850)  served  as  a 
significant  prologue. 

1  It  is,  indeed,  clear,  as  has  been  seen,  from  Browning's  corre- 
spondence that  a  sequel  of  this  kind  was  intended  when  the  first 
nine  sections  were  published.  The  traditional  legend  of  David 
would  in  any  case  suggest  so  much.  That  the  intention  was  not 
then  executed  is  just  the  significant  fact. 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY 


"3 


There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  devout  Christian 
faith  of  his  wife  was  principally  concerned  in  this  new 
direction  of  his  poetry.  Yet  we  may  easily  overstate 
both  the  nature  of  her  influence  and  its  extent.  She, 
as  little  as  he,  was  a  dogmatic  Christian  ;  both  refused 
to  put  on,  in  her  phrase,  "  any  of  the  liveries  of  the 
sects."1  "  The  truth,  as  God  sees  it,  must  be  some- 
thing so  different  from  these  opinions  about  truth. 
.  .  .  I  believe  in  what  is  divine  and  floats  at 
highest,  in  all  these  different  theologies, — and  because 
the  really  Divine  draws  together  souls,  and  tends  so 
to  a  unity,  I  could  pray  anywhere  and  with  all  sorts 
of  worshippers,  from  the  Sistine  chapel  to  Mr.  Fox's, 
those  kneeling  and  those  standing."2  Yet  she  de- 
murs, a  little  farther  on  in  the  same  letter,  to  both 
these  extremes.  "  The  Unitarians  seem  to  me  to 
throw  over  what  is  most  beautiful  in  the  Christian 
Doctrine ;  but  the  Formulists,  on  the  other  side,  stir 
up  a  dust,  in  which  it  appears  excusable  not  to  see." 
To  which  he  replies  (Aug.  17):  "  Dearest,  I  know 
your  very  meaning,  in  what  you  said  of  religion,  and 
responded  to  it  with  my  whole  soul — what  you  ex- 
press now  is  for  us  both,  .  .  .  those  are  my  own 
feelings,  my  convictions  beside — instinct  confirmed  by 
reason." 

These  words  of  Browning's  seem  to  furnish  the 
clue  to  the  relation  between  their  minds  in  this  mat- 
ter. Their  intercourse  disturbed  no  conviction  on 
either  side,  for  their  convictions  were  identical.  But 
her  intense  personal  devoutness  undoubtedly  quickened 

I  E.  B.  B.  to  R.  B.,  15th  Aug.,  1846.  *  lb. 


1 14  BROWNING 

what  was  personal  in  his  belief,  drew  it  into  an  at- 
mosphere of  keener  and  more  emotional  conscious- 
ness, and  in  particular  gave  to  that  "  revelation  of 
God  in  Christ  "  which  they  both  regarded  as  what 
was  "  most  beautiful  in  the  Christian  doctrine,"  a 
more  vital  hold  upon  his  intellectual  and  imaginative 
life.  In  this  sense,  but  only  in  this  sense,  his  fervid 
words  to  her  (February,  1846) — u  I  mean  to  .  .  . 
let  my  mind  get  used  to  its  new  medium  of  sight, 
seeing  all  things  as  it  does  through  you  ;  and  then  let 
all  I  have  done  be  the  prelude  and  the  real  work  be- 
gin " — were  not  unfulfilled.  No  deep  hiatus,  such  as 
this  phrase  suggests,  divides  the  later,  as  a  whole, 
from  the  earlier  work  :  the  "  dramatic "  method, 
which  was  among  the  elements  of  his  art  most  for- 
eign to  her  lyric  nature,  established  itself  more  and 
more  firmly  in  his  practice.  But  the  letters  of 
1845-46  show  that  her  example  was  stimulating  him 
to  attempt  a  more  direct  and  personal  utterance  in 
poetry,  and  while  he  did  not  succeed,  or  succeeded 
only  "  once  and  for  one  only,"  in  evading  his  dra- 
matic bias,  he  certainly  succeeded  in  making  the  dra- 
matic form  more  eloquently  expressive  of  his  personal 
faith. 

This  was  peculiarly  the  case  in  the  remarkable 
Christmas- Eve  and  Easter-Day  (1850),  the  first-fruits 
of  his  married  life,  and  the  most  instinct  of  all  his 
poems  with  the  mingled  literary  and  religious  influ- 
ences which  it  brought.  The  influence  of  the  ardent 
singer,  which  impelled  him  to  fuller  self-expression, 
here  concurred  with  that  of  the  devout  but  undog- 


/    v  or  ths  > 

(  UHIVE«»'TY  ) 

V^CAUFOfiS*^ 
WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITAL1!  II5 

matic  Christian,  which  drew  the  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity nearer  to  the  focus  of  his  imagination  and  his 
thought.  There  is  much  throughout  which  suggests 
that  Browning  was  deliberately  putting  off  the  habits 
and  usages  of  his  art,  and  reaching  out  this  way  and 
that  towards  untried  sources  and. avenues  of  expres- 
sion. He  lays  hold  for  the  first  time  of  the  machinery 
of  supernatural  vision.  Nothing  that  he  had  yet  done 
approached  in  boldness  these  Christmas  and  Easter 
apparitions  of  the  Lord  of  Love.  They  break  in, 
unheralded,  a  startling  but  splendid  anomaly,  upon  his 
human  and  actual  world.  And  the  really  notable 
thing  is  that  never  had  he  drawn  human  actuality  with 
so  remorseless  and  even  brutal  fidelity  as  just  here. 
He  seeks  no  legendary  scene  and  atmosphere  like  that 
of  Theocrite's  Rome,  in  which  the  angels  who  come 
and  go,  and  God  who  enjoys  his  "  little  human 
praise,"  would  be  missed  if  they  were  not  there  ;  but 
opens  the  visions  of  the  Empyrean  upon  modern 
Camberwell.  The  pages  in  which  Browning  might 
seem,  for  once,  to  vie  with  the  author  of  the  Apoc- 
alypse are  interleaved  with  others  in  which,  for  once, 
he  seems  to  vie  with  Balzac  or  Zola.  Of  course  this 
is  intensely  characteristic  of  Browning.  The  quick- 
ened spiritual  pulse  which  these  poems  betoken  be- 
trays itself  just  in  his  more  daringly  assured  embrace 
of  the  heights  and  the  depths  of  the  universe,  as  com- 
municating and  akin,  prompting  also  that  not  less 
daring  embrace  of  the  extremes  of  expression, — sub- 
lime imagery  and  rollicking  rhymes, — as  equally  gen- 
uine utterances  of  spiritual  fervour, — 


Il6  BROWNING 

"  When  frothy  spume  and  frequent  sputter 
Prove  that  the  soul's  depths  boil  in  earnest." 

These  lines,  and  the  great  Shelleyan  declaration  that 

"  A  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God," 

are  the  key  to  both  poems,  but  peculiarly  to  the 
Christmas-Day,  in  which  they  occur.  We  need  not 
in  any  wise  identify  Browning  with  the  Christmas- 
Day  visionary  ;  but  it  is  clear  that  what  is  "  dramatic  " 
in  him  exfoliates,  as  it  were,  from  a  root  of  character 
and  thought  which  are  altogether  Browning's  own. 
Browning  is  apparent  in  the  vivacious  critic  and 
satirist  of  religious  extravagances,  standing  a  little 
aloof  from  all  the  constituted  religions  ;  but  he  is  ap- 
parent also  in  the  imaginative  and  sympathetic  student 
of  religion,  who  divines  the  informing  spark  of  love 
in  all  sincere  worship  ;  and  however  far  he  may  have 
been  from  putting  forward  the  little  conventicle  with 
its  ruins  of  humanity,  its  soul  at  struggle  with  insanity, 
as  his  own  final  choice,  that  choice  symbolised  in  a 
picturesque  half-humorous  way  his  own  profound 
preference  for  the  spiritual  good  which  is  hardly  won. 
He  makes  the  speaker  choose  the  u  earthen  vessel  " 
in  spite  of  its  u  taints  of  earth,"  because  it  brimmed 
with  spiritual  water ;  but  in  Browning  himself  there 
was  something  which  relished  the  spiritual  water  the 
more  because  the  earthen  vessel  was  flawed. 

Like  Christmas-Eve,  EasterrDay  is  a  dramatic  study, 
— profound    convictions   of    the    poet's    own    being 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY 


"7 


projected  as  it  were  through  forms  of  religious  con- 
sciousness perceptibly  more  angular  and  dogmatically 
defined  than  his  own.  The  main  speaker  is  plainly 
not  identical  with  the  narrator  of  Christmas- Eve,  who  is 
incidentally  referred  to  as  "  our  friend."  Their  first 
beliefs  may  be  much  alike,  but  in  the  temper  of  their  be- 
lief they  differ  widely.  The  speaker  in  Christmas-Eve 
is  a  genial  if  caustic  observer,  submitting  with  robust 
tolerance  to  the  specks  in  the  water  which  quenches 
his  thirst ;  the  speaker  of  Easter-Day  is  an  anxious 
precisian,  fearful  of  the  contamination  of  earth,  and 
hoping  that  he  may  "  yet  escape  "  the  doom  of  too 
facile  content.  The  problem  of  the  one  is,  what  to 
believe;  the  problem  of  the  other,  how  to  believe; 
and  each  is  helped  towards  a  solution  by  a  vision  of 
divine  love.  But  the  Easter-Day  Vision  conveys  a 
sterner  message  than  that  of  Christmas-Eve.  Love 
now  illuminates,  not  by  enlarging  sympathy  and  dis- 
closing the  hidden  soul  of  good  in  error,  but  by  sup- 
pressing sympathies  too  diffusely  and  expansively 
bestowed.  The  Christmas  Vision  makes  humanity 
seem  more  divine;  the  Easter  Vision  makes  the 
divine  seem  less  human.  The  hypersensitive  moral 
nature  of  the  Easter-Day  speaker,  on  the  other  hand, 
sees  his  own  criminal  darkness  of  heart  and  mind  be- 
fore all  else,  and  the  divine  visitation  becomes  a  Last 
Judgment,  with  the  fierce  vindictive  red  of  the 
Northern  Lights  replacing  the  mild  glory  of  the  lunar 
rainbows,  and  a  stern  and  scornful  cross-examination 
the  silent  swift  convoy  of  the  winged  robe.  This 
difference  of  temper  is  vividly  expressed  in  the  style. 


1 18  BROWNING 

The  rollicking  rhymes,  the  "  spume  and  sputter  "  of 
the  fervent  soul,  give  place  to  a  manner  of  sustained 
seriousness  and  lyric  beauty. 

Yet  the  Easter-Day  speaker  probes  deeper  and 
raises  more  fundamental  issues.  When  the  form  of 
Christian  belief  to  be  adopted  has  been  settled,  a 
certain  class  of  believing  minds,  not  the  least 
estimable,  will  still  remain  restive.  Browning  of  all 
men  felt  impatient  of  every  nominal  belief  held  as 
unassimilated  material,  not  welded  into  the  living 
substance  of  character;  and  he  makes  his  Easter- 
Day  visionary  confound  with  withering  irony  the 
"  faith "  which  seeks  assurance  in  outward  "  evi- 
dence,"— 

"  Tis  found, 
No  doubt :  as  is  your  sort  of  mind, 
So  is  your  sort  of  search :  you'll  find 
What  you  desire." 

Still  less  mercy  has  he  for  the  dogmatic  voluptuary 
who  complacently  assumes  the  "  all-stupendous  tale  " 
of  Christianity  to  have  been  enacted 

"  to  give  our  joys  a  zest, 
And  prove  our  sorrows  for  the  best." 

Upon  these  complacent  materialisms  and  epicurean- 
isms of  the  religious  character  falls  the  scorching 
splendour  of  the  Easter  Vision,  with  its  ruthless 
condemnation  of  whatever  is  not  glorified  by  Love, 
passing  over  into  the  uplifting  counter-affirmation, 
indispensable  to  Browning's  optimism,  that  — 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  II9 

"  All  thou  dost  enumerate 
Of  power  and  beauty  in  the  world 
The  mightiness  of  Love  was  curled 
Inextricably  round  about." 

With  all  their  nobility  of  feeling,  and  frequent 
splendour  of  description,  these  twin  poems  cannot 
claim  a  place  in  Browning's  work  at  all  correspond- 
ing to  the  seriousness  with  which  he  put  them  for- 
ward, and  the  imposing  imaginative  apparatus  called 
in.  The  strong  personal  conviction  which  seems  to 
have  been  striving  for  direct  utterance,  checked  with- 
out perfectly  mastering  his  dramatic  instincts  and 
habitudes,  resulting  in  a  beautiful  but  indecisive 
poetry  which  lacks  both  the  frankness  of  a  personal 
deliverance  and  the  plasticity  of  a  work  of  art.  The 
speakers  can  neither  be  identified  with  the  poet  nor 
detached  from  him ;  they  are  neither  his  mouthpieces 
nor  his  creations.  The  daring  supernaturalism  seems 
to  indicate  that  the  old  spell  of  Dante,  so  keenly  felt 
in  the  Sordello  days,  had  been  wrought  to  new  potency 
by  the  magic  of  the  life  in  Dante's  Florence,  and  the 
subtler  magic  of  the  love  which  he  was  presently  to 
compare  not  obscurely  to  that  of  Dante  for  Beatrice.1 
The  divine  apparitions  have  the  ironic  hauteurs  and 
sarcasms  of  Beatrice  in  the  Paradise.  Yet  the  com- 
parison brings  into  glaring  prominence  the  radical  in- 
coherence of  Browning's  presentment.  In  Dante's 
world  all  the  wonders  that  he  describes  seem  to  be  in 
place ;  but  the  Christmas  and  Easter  Visions  are  felt 
as  intrusive  anachronisms  in  modern  London,  where 
1  One  Word  More. 
% 


120  BROWNING 

the  divinest  influences  are  not  those  which  become 
palpable  in  visions,  but  those  which  work  through 
heart  and  brain. 

Browning  probably  felt  this,  for  the  Christmas- Eve 
and  Easter-Day  stands  in  this  respect  alone  in  his 
work.  But  the  idea  of  Christ  as  the  sign  and 
symbol  of  the  love  which  penetrates  the  universe  lost 
none  of  its  hold  upon  his  imagination  •,  and  it  inspired 
some  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  the  Men  and 
Women.  It  was  under  this  impulse  that  he  now,  at 
some  time  during  the  early  Italian  years,  completed 
the  splendid  torso  of  Saul.  David's  Vision  of  the 
Christ  that  is  to  be  has  as  little  apparent  relation  to 
the  quiet  pastoralism  of  the  earlier  stanzas  as  the 
Easter  Vision  to  the  common-sense  reflections  that 
preceded  it.  But  while  this  Vision  abruptly  bursts 
upon  him,  David's  is  the  final  conquest  of  his  own 
ardent  intellect,  under  the  impulse  of  a  great  human 
task  which  lifts  it  beyond  its  experience,  and  calls 
out  all  its  powers.  David  is  occupied  with  no 
speculative  question,  but  with  the  practical  problem 
of  saving  a  ruined  soul ;  and  neither  logical  ingenuity 
nor  divine  suggestion,  but  the  inherent  spiritual 
significance  of  the  situation,  urges  his  thought  along 
the  lonely  path  of  prophecy.  The  love  for  the  old 
king,  which  prompts  him  to  try  all  the  hidden  paths 
of  his  soul  in  quest  of  healing,  becomes  a  lighted 
torch  by  which  he  tracks  out  the  meaning  of  the 
world  and  the  still  unrevealed  purposes  of  God ;  until 
the  energy  of  thought  culminates  in  vision,  and  the 
Christ  stands  full   before  his  eyes.     All  that  is  super- 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  121 

natural  in  the  Saul  is  viewed  through  the  fervid 
atmosphere  of  David's  soul.  The  magic  of  the 
wonderful  Nocturne  at  the  close,  where  he  feels  his 
way  home  through  the  appalled  and  serried  gloom,  is 
broken  by  no  apparition ;  the  whole  earth  is  alive  and 
awake  around  him,  and  thrills  to  the  quickening  in- 
rush of  the  "  new  land  " ;  but  its  light  is  the  tingling 
emotion  of  the  stars,  and  its  voice  the  cry  of  the  little 
brooks ;  and  the  thronging  cohorts  of  angels  and 
powers  are  unuttered  and  unseen. 

Only  less  beautiful  than  Browning's  pictures  of 
spiritual  childhood  are  his  pictures  of  spiritual  matu- 
rity and  old  age.  The  lyric  simplicity,  the  naive  in- 
tensity which  bear  a  David,  a  Pippa,  a  Pompilia  with- 
out effort  into  the  region  of  the  highest  spiritual 
vision,  appealed  less  fully  to  his  imagination  than  the 
more  complex  and  embarrassed  processes  through 
which  riper  minds  forge  their  way  towards  the  com- 
pleted insight  of  a  Rabbi  ben  Ezra.  In  this  sense, 
the  great  song  of  David  has  a  counterpart  in  the 
subtle  dramatic  study  of  the  Arab  physician  Karshish. 
He  also  is  startled  into  discovery  by  a  unique  experi- 
ence. But  where  David  is  lifted  on  and  on  by  a 
continuous  tide  of  illuminating  thought,  perfectly  new 
and  strange,  but  to  which  nothing  in  him  opposes  the 
semblance  of  resistance,  Karshish  feels  only  a  mys- 
terious attraction,  which  he  hardly  confesses,  and 
which  all  the  intellectual  habits  and  convictions  of  a 
life  given  up  to  study  and  thought  seem  to  gainsay. 
No  touch  of  worldly  motive  belongs  to  either.  The 
shepherd-boy  is  not  more  single-souled  than  this  de- 


122  BROWNING 

voted  "  picker  up  of  learning's  crumbs,"  who  makes 
nothing  of  perilous  and  toilsome  journeys  for  the  sake 
of  his  art,  who  is  threatened  by  hungry  wild  beasts, 
stripped  and  beaten  by  robbers,  arrested  as  a  spy.  At 
every  step  his  quick  scrutiny  is  rewarded  by  the  dis- 
covery of  some  new  drug,  mineral,  or  herb, — "  things 
of  price  " — u  blue  flowering  borage,  the  Aleppo  sort," 
or  "  Judaea's  gum-tragacanth."  But  Karshish  has 
much  of  the  temper  of  Browning  himself:  these 
technicalities  are  the  garb  of  a  deep  underlying  mysti- 
cism. This  man's  flesh  so  admirably  made  by  God 
is  yet  but  the  earthly  prison  for  u  that  pufF  of  vapour 
from  his  mouth,  man's  soul."  The  case  of  Lazarus, 
though  at  once,  as  a  matter  of  course,  referred  to  the 
recognised  medical  categories,  yet  strangely  puzzles 
and  arrests  him,  with  a  fascination  that  will  not  be  put 
by.  This  abstracted  docile  man  of  perfect  physical 
vigour,  who  heeds  the  approach  of  the  Roman  aven- 
ger as  he  would  the  passing  of  a  woman  with  gourds 
by  the  way,  and  is  yet  no  fool,  who  seems  apathetic 
and  yet  loves  the  very  brutes  and  the  flowers  of  the 
field, — compels  his  scrutiny,  as  a  phenomenon  of 
soul,  and  it  is  with  the  eye  of  a  psychological  idealist 
rather  than  of  a  physician  that  he  interprets  him : 

**  He  holds  on  firmly  to  some  thread  of  life —     .     .     . 
Which  runs  across  some  vast  distracting  orb 
Of  glory  on  either  side  that  meagre  thread, 
Which,  conscious  of,  he  must  not  enter  yet  — 
The  spiritual  life  around  the  earthly  life  : 
The  law  of  that  is  known  to  him  as  this, 
His  heart  and  brain  move  there,  his  feet  stay  here. 
So  is  the  man  perplext  with  impulses 


WEDDED   LIFE    IN   ITALY  123 

Sudden  to  start  off  crosswise,  not  straight  on, 
Proclaiming  what  is  right  and  wrong  across, 
And  not  along,  this  black  thread  through  the  blaze  — 
*  It  should  be  '  baulked  by  '  here  it  cannot  be.'  " 

Lazarus  stands  where  Paracelsus  conceived  that  he 
himself  stood :  he  "  knows  God's  secret  while  he 
holds  the  thread  of  life  "  ;  he  lives  in  the  glare  of  abso- 
lute knowledge,  an  implicit  criticism  of  the  Paracelsian 
endeavour  to  let  in  upon  men  the  searing  splendour 
of  the  unclouded  day.  To  Karshish,  however,  these 
very  embarrassments — so  unlike  the  knowing  clever- 
ness of  the  spiritual  charlatan — make  it  credible  that 
Lazarus  is  indeed  no  oriental  Sludge,  but  one  who  has 
verily  seen  God.  But  then  came  the  terrible  crux, — 
the  pretension,  intolerable  to  Semitic  monotheism, 
that  God  had  been  embodied  in  a  man.  The  words 
scorch  the  paper  as  he  writes,  and,  like  Ferishtah,  he 
will  not  repeat  them.  Yet  he  cannot  escape  the  spell 
of  the  witness,  and  the  strange  thought  clings  tena- 
ciously to  him,  defying  all  the  evasive  shifts  of  a 
trained  mind,  and  suddenly  over-mastering  him  when 
his  concern  with  it  seems  finally  at  an  end — when  his 
letter  is  finished,  pardon  asked,  and  farewell  said — in 
that  great  outburst,  startling  and  unforeseen  yet  not 
incredible : 

"  The  very  God!  think,  Abib;  dost  thou  think? 
So,  the  All-Great  were  the  All- Loving  too, — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying,  *  O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here  ! ' 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself! " 

That  words  like  these,  intensely  Johannine  in  con- 


124  BROWNING 

ception,  should  seem  to  start  naturally  from  a  mind 
which  just  before  has  shrunk  in  horror  from  the  idea 
of  an  approximation  between  God  and  that  which  He 
fashioned,  is  an  extraordinary  tour  de  force  of  dramatic 
portraiture.  Among  the  minor  traits  which  contribute 
to  it  is  one  of  a  kind  to  which  Browning  rarely  re- 
sorts. The  u  awe  "  which  invests  Lazarus  is  height- 
ened by  a  mystic  setting  of  landscape.  The  visionary 
scene  of  his  first  meeting  with  Karshish,  though  alto- 
gether Browningesque  in  detail,  is  Wordsworthian  in 
its  mysterious  effect  upon  personality  : 

"  I  crossed  a  ridge  of  short,  sharp,  broken  hills 
Like  an  old  lion's  cheek  teeth.     Out  there  came 
A  moon  made  like  a  face  with  certain  spots 
Multiform,  manifold  and  menacing  : 
Then  a  wind  rose  behind  me." 

A  less  formidable  problem  is  handled  in  the  com- 
panion study  of  Cleon.  The  Greek  mind  fascinated 
Browning,  though  most  of  his  renderings  of  it  have 
the  savour  of  a  salt  not  gathered  in  Attica,  and  his 
choice  of  types  shows  a  strong  personal  bias.  From 
the  heroic  and  majestic  elder  art  of  Greece  he  turns 
with  pronounced  preference  to  Euripides  the  human 
and  the  positive,  with  his  facile  and  versatile  intellect, 
his  agile  criticism,  and  his  "  warm  tears."  It  is  some- 
what along  these  lines  that  he  has  conceived  his  Greek 
poet  of  the  days  of  Karshish,  confronted,  like  the 
Arab  doctor,  with  the  "  new  thing."  As  Karshish  is 
at  heart  a  spiritual  idealist,  for  all  his  preoccupation 
with  drugs  and  stones,  so  Cleon,  a  past-master  of 
poetry  and  painting,  is  among  the  most  positive  and 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 25 

worldly-wise  of  men.  He  looks  back  over  a  life 
scored  with  literary  triumphs,  as  Karshish  over  his 
crumbs  of  learning  gathered  at  the  cost  of  blows  and 
obloquy.  But  while  Karshish  has  the  true  scholar's 
dispassionate  and  self-effacing  thirst  for  knowledge, 
Cleon  measures  his  achievements  with  the  insight  of 
an  epicurean  artist.  He  gathers  in  luxuriously  the 
incense  of  universal  applause, — his  epos  inscribed  on 
golden  plates,  his  songs  rising  from  every  fishing-bark 
at  nightfall, — and  wistfully  contrasts  the  vast  range  of 
delights  which  as  an  artist  he  imagines,  with  the  lim- 
ited pleasures  which  as  a  man  he  enjoys.  The  mag- 
nificent symmetry,  the  rounded  completeness  of  his 
life,  suffer  a  serious  deduction  here,  and  his  Greek 
sense  of  harmony  suffers  offence  as  well  as  his  human 
hunger  for  joy.  He  is  a  thorough  realist,  and  finds 
no  satisfaction  in  contemplating  what  he  may  not  pos- 
sess. Art  itself  suffers  disparagement,  as  heightening 
this  vain  capacity  of  contemplation : 

"  I  know  the  joy  of  kingship  :  well,  thou  art  king ! " 

With  great  ingenuity  this  Greek  realism  is  made  the 
stepping-stone  to  a  conception  of  immortality  as  un- 
Greek  as  that  of  the  Incarnation  is  un-Semitic.  Kar- 
shish shrarrx  intuitively  from  a  conception  which  fas- 
cinated while  it  awed ;  to  Cleon  a  future  state  in  which 
joy  and  capability  will  be  brought  again  to  equality 
seems  a  most  plausible  supposition,  which  he  only  re- 
jects with  a  sigh  for  lack  of  outer  evidence  : — 

"  Zeus  has  not  yet  revealed  it ;  and  alas, 
He  must  have  done  so,  were  it  possible !  " 


1 26  BROWNING 

The  little  vignette  in  the  opening  lines  finely  sym- 
bolises the  brilliant  Greek  decadence,  as  does  the  clos- 
ing picture  in  Karshish  the  mystic  dawn  of  the  Earth. 
Here  the  portico,  flooded  with  the  glory  of  a  sun  about 
to  set,  profusely  heaped  with  treasures  of  art ;  there 
the  naked  uplands  of  Palestine,  and  the  moon  rising 
over  jagged  hills  in  a  wind-swept  sky. 

It  was  in  such  grave  adagio  notes  as  these  that 
Browning  chose  to  set  forth  the  "  intimations  of  im- 
mortality "  in  the  meditative  wisdom  and  humanity  of 
heathendom.  The  after-fortunes  of  the  Christian 
iegend,  on  the  other  hand,  and  the  naive  ferocities  and 
fantasticalities  of  the  medieval  world  provoked  him 
rather  to  scherzo, — audacious  and  inimitable  scherzo, 
riotously  grotesque  on  the  surface,  but  with  a  gro- 
tesqueness  so  penetrated  and  informed  by  passion  that  it 
becomes  sublime.  Holy-Cross  Day  and  The  Heretic's 
Tragedy  both  culminate,  like  Karshish  and  Cleon,  in  a 
glimpse  of  Christ.  But  here,  instead  of  being  ap- 
proached through  stately  avenues  of  meditation,  it  is 
wrung  from  the  grim  tragedy  of  persecution  and 
martyrdom.  The  Jews,  packed  like  rats  to  hear  the 
sermon,  mutter  under  their  breath  the  sublime  song  of 
Ben  Ezra,  one  of  the  most  poignant  indictments  of 
Christianity  in  the  name  of  Christ  ever  conceived : — 

"  We  withstood  Christ  then  ?     Be  mindful  how 
At  least  we  withstand  Barabbas  now  ! 
Was  our  outrage  sore  ?     But  the  worst  we  spared, 
To  have  called  these — Christians,  had  we  dared ! 
Let  defiance  of  them  pay  mistrust  of  Thee, 
And  Rome  make  amends  for  Calvary  !  " 


WEDDED   LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 27 

And  John  of  Molay,  as  he  burns  in  Paris  Square,  cries 
upon  "  the  Name  he  had  cursed  with  all  his  life." 
The  Tragedy  stands  alone  in  literature ;  Browning  has 
written  nothing  more  original.  Its  singularity  springs 
mainly  from  a  characteristic  and  wonderfully  success- 
ful attempt  to  render  several  planes  of  emotion  and 
animus  through  the  same  tale.  The  "  singer  "  looks 
on  at  the  burning,  the  very  embodiment  of  the  robust, 
savagely  genial  spectator,  with  a  keen  eye  for  all  the 
sporting-points  in  the  exhibition, — noting  that  the 
fagots  are  piled  to  the  right  height  and  are  of  the  right 
quality  — 

"  Good  sappy  bavins  that  kindle  forthwith,     .     .     . 
Larch-heart  that  chars  to  a  chalk-white  glow  : " 

and  when  the  torch  is  clapt-to  and  he  has  "  leapt  back 
safe,"  poking  jests  and  gibes  at  the  victim.  But 
through  this  distorting  medium  we  see  the  soul  of 
John  himself,  like  a  gleam-lit  landscape  through  the 
whirl  of  a  storm  ;  a  strange  weird  sinister  thing,  glim- 
mering in  a  dubious  light  between  the  blasphemer  we 
half  see  in  him  with  the  singer's  eyes  and  the  saint 
we  half  dej^*y  with  our  own.  Of  explicit  pathos 
there  is  notVtouch.  Yet  how  subtly  the  inner  pathos 
and  the  outward  scorn  are  fused  in  the  imagery  of 
these  last  stanzas  :  — 

"  Ha,  ha,  John  plucketh  now  at  his  rose 
To  rid  himself  of  a  sorrow  at  heart ! 
Lo, — petal  on  petal,  fierce  rays  unclose  ; 
Anther  on  anther,  sharp  spikes  outstart ; 


128  BROWNING 

And  with  blood  for  dew,  the  bosom  boils ; 

And  a  gust  of  sulphur  is  all  its  smell ; 
And  lo,  he  is  horribly  in  the  toils 

Of  a  coal-black  giant  flower  of  hell ! 

"  So,  as  John  called  now,  through  the  fire  amain, 

On  the  Name,  he  had  cursed  with,  all  his  life  — 
To  the  Person,  he  bought  and  sold  again  — 

For  the  Face,  with  his  daily  buffets  rife  — 
Feature  by  feature  It  took  its  place : 

And  his  voice,  like  a  mad  dog's  choking  bark, 
At  the  steady  whole  of  the  Judge's  face  — 

Died.     Forth  John's  soul  flared  into  the  dark." 

None  of  these  dramatic  studies  of  Christianity  at- 
tracted so  lively  an  interest  as  Bishop  BlougrarrCs 
Apology.  It  was  u  actual "  beyond  anything  he  had 
yet  done;  it  portrayed  under  the  thinnest  of  veils  an 
illustrious  Catholic  prelate  familiar  in  London  society  ; 
it  could  be  enjoyed  with  little  or  no  feeling  for  poetry  ; 
and  it  was  amazingly  clever.  Even  Tennyson,  his 
loyal  friend  but  unwilling  reader,  excepted  it,  on  the 
last  ground,  from  his  slighting  judgment  upon  Men  and 
Women  at  large.  The  figure  of  Blougram,  no  less 
than  his  discourse,  was  virtually  new  in  Browning, 
and  could  have  come  from  him  at  no  earlier  time. 
He  is  foreshadowed,  no  doubt,  by  a  sej^s  of  those 
accomplished  mundane  ecclesiastics  whoro  Browning 
at  all  times  drew  with  so  keen  a  zest, — by  Ogniben, 
the  bishop  in  Pippa  Passes,  the  bishop  of  St.  Praxed's. 
But  mundane  as  he  is,  he  bears  the  mark  of  that  sense 
of  the  urgency  of  the  Christian  problem  which  since 
Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day  had  so  largely  and 
variously  coloured  Browning's  work.     It  occurred  to 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 29 

none  of  those  worldly  bishops  to  justify  their  worldli- 
ness, — it  was  far  too  deeply  ingrained  for  that.  But 
Blougram's  brilliant  defence,  enormously  dispropor- 
tioned  as  it  is  to  the  insignificance  of  the  attack,  marks 
his  tacit  recognition  of  loftier  ideals  than  he  professes. 
Like  Cleon,  he  bears  involuntary  witness  to  what  he 
repudiates. 

But  there  is  much  more  in  Blougram  than  this. 
The  imposing  personality  of  Wiseman  contained  much 
to  attract  and  conciliate  a  poet  like  Browning,  whose 
visionary  idealism  went  along  with  so  unaffected  a 
relish  for  the  world  and  the  talents  which  succeed 
there.  A  great  spiritual  ruler,  performing  with  con- 
genial ease  the  enormous  and  varied  functions  of  his 
office,  and  with  intellectual  resources,  when  they  were 
discharged,  to  win  distinction  in  scholarship,  at  chess, 
in  society,  appealed  powerfully  to  Browning's  conge- 
nial delight  in  all  strong  and  vivid  life.  He  was  a  great 
athlete,  who  had  completely  mastered  his  circum- 
stances and  shaped  his  life  to  his  will.  Opposed  to  a 
man  of  this  varied  and  brilliant  achievement,  an  inef- 
fectual dilettante  appeared  a  sorry  creature  enough ; 
and  Browning,  far  from  taking  his  part  and  putting  in 
his  craven  mouth  the  burning  retorts  which  the  reader 
in  vain  expects,  makes  him  play  helplessly  with  olive- 
stones  while  the  great  bishop  rolls  him  out  his  mind, 
and  then,  as  one  cured  and  confuted,  betake  himself 
to  the  life  of  humbler  practical  activity  and  social 
service. 

It  is  plain  that  the  actual  Blougram  offered  tempting 
points  of  contact  with   that   strenuous   ideal   of  life 


130  BROWNING 

which  he  was  later  to  preach  through  the  lips  of 
"  Rabbi  ben  Ezra."  Even  what  was  most  prob- 
lematic in  him,  his  apparently  sincere  profession  of 
an  outworn  creed,  suggested  the  difficult  feat  of  a 
gymnast  balancing  on  a  narrow  edge,  or  forcibly  hold- 
ing his  unbelief  in  check, — 

"  Kept  quiet  like  the  snake  'neath  Michael's  foot, 
Who  stands  calm  just  because  he  feels  it  writhe." 

But  Browning  marks  clearly  the  element  both  of  self- 
deception  and  deliberate  masquerade  in  Blougram's 
defence.  He  made  him  "  say  right  things  and  call 
them  by  wrong  names."  The  intellectual  athlete  in 
him  went  out  to  the  intellectual  athlete  in  the  other, 
and  rejoiced  in  every  equation  he  seemed  to  establish. 
He  played,  and  made  Blougram  play,  upon  the  elusive 
resemblance  between  the  calm  of  effortless  mastery 
and  that  of  hardly  won  control. 

The  rich  and  varied  poetry  reviewed  in  the  last 
three  sections  occupies  less  than  half  of  Men  and 
Women,  and  leaves  the  second  half  of  the  title  unex- 
plained. In  that  richer  emotional  atmosphere  which 
breathes  from  every  line  of  his  Italian  work,  the  pro- 
found fulfilment  of  his  spiritual  needs  which  he  found 
in  his  home  was  the  most  vital  and  potent  element. 
His  imaginative  grasp  of  every  kind  of  spiritual  en- 
ergy, of  every  "  incident  of  soul,"  was  deepened  by 
his  new  but  incessant  and  unqualified  experience  of 
love.  His  poetry  focussed  itself  more  persistently 
than  ever  about  those  creative  energies  akin  to  love, 
of  which  art  in  the  fullest  sense  is  the  embodiment, 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY 


I3I 


and  religion  the  recognition.  It  would  have  been 
strange  if  the  special  form  of  love-experience  to 
which  the  quickening  thrill  was  due  had  remained  un- 
touched by  it.  In  fact,  however,  the  title  of  the  vol- 
ume is  significant  as  well  as  accurate  ;  for  Browning's 
poetry  of  the  love  between  men  and  women  may  be 
said,  save  for  a  few  simple  though  exquisite  earlier 
notes,  to  begin  with  it. 

VII 

The  love-poetry  of  the  Men  and  Women  volumes, 
as  originally  published,  was  the  most  abundant  and 
various,  if  not  the  most  striking,  part  of  its  contents. 
It  was  almost  entirely  transferred,  in  the  collected 
edition  of  his  Poems  issued  in  1863,  to  other  rubrics, 
to  the  Dramatic  Lyrics,  of  which  it  now  forms  the 
great  bulk,  and  to  the  Dramatic  Romances.  But  of 
Browning's  original  "  fifty  men  and  women,"  nearly 
half  were  lovers  or  occupied  with  love.  Such  fer- 
tility was  natural  enough  in  the  first  years  of  a  su- 
premely happy  marriage,  crowning  an  early  manhood  in 
which  love  of  any  kind  had,  for  better  or  worse,  played 
hardly  any  part  at  all.  Yet  almost  nothing  in  these 
beautiful  and  often  brilliant  lyrics  is  in  any  strict  sense 
personal.  The  biographer  who  searches  them  for 
traits  quivering  with  intimate  experience  searches  all 
but  in  vain.  Browning's  own  single  and  supreme 
passion  touched  no  fountain  of  song,  such  as  love  sets 
flowing  in  most  poets  and  in  many  who  are  not  poets  T* 
even  the  memorable  months  of  1845-46  provoked  no 
Sonnets  "  to  the  Portuguese."     His  personal  story  im- 


I32  BROWNING 

presses  itself  upon  his  poetry  only  through  the  preoc- 
cupation which  it  induces  with  the  love-stories  of 
other  people,  mostly  quite  unlike  his  own.  The  white 
light  of  his  own  perfect  union  broke  from  that  pris- 
matic intellect  of  his  in  a  poetry  brilliant  with  almost 
every  other  hue.  No  English  poet  of  his  century, 
and  few  of  any  other,  have  made  love  seem  so  won- 
derful ;  but  he  habitually  takes  this  wonder  bruised 
and  jostled  in  the  grip  of  thwarting  conditions.  In 
his  way  of  approaching  love  Browning  strangely  blends 
the  mystic's  exaltation  with  the  psychologist's  cool 
penetrating  scrutiny  of  its  accompanying  phenomena, 
its  favourable  or  impeding  conditions.  The  keen 
analytic  accent  of  Paracelsus  mingles  with  the  ecstatic 
unearthly  note  of  Shelley.  "  Love  is  all  "  might  have 
served  as  the  text  for  the  whole  volume  of  Browning's 
love-poetry  j  but  the  text  is  wrought  out  with  an 
amazingly  acute  vision  for  all  the  things  which  are 
not  love.  "  Love  triumphing  over  the  world  "  might 
have  been  the  motto  for  most  of  the  love-poems  in 
Men  and  Women ;  but  some  would  have  had  to  be  as- 
signed to  the  opposite  rubric,  "  The  vi|orld  triumphing 
over  love."  Sometimes  Love's  triumphs  is,  for  Brown- 
ing, the  rapture  of  complete  union,  for  which  all  outer 
things  exist  only  by  subduing  themselves  to  its  mood 
and  taking  its  hue ;  sometimes  it  is  the  more  ascetic 
and  spiritual  triumph  of  an  unrequited  lover  in  the 
lonely  glory  of  his  love. 

"""^The  triumph  of  Browning's  united  lovers  has  often 
a  superb  Elizabethan  note  of  defiance.  Passion  ob- 
literates  for  them  the  past  and  throws  a  mystically 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 33 

hued  veil  over  Nature.  The  gentle  Romantic  senti- 
ments hardly  touch  the  fresh  springs  of  their  emotion. 
They  may  meet  and  woo  "  among  the  ruins,"  as 
Coleridge  met  and  wooed  his  Genevieve  "  beside  the 
ruined  tower " ;  but  their  song  does  not,  like  his, 
"  suit  well  that  ruin  old  and  hoary,"  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, tramples  with  gay  scorn  upon  the  lingering 
memories  of  the  ruined  city, — a  faded  pageant  yoked 
to  its  triumphal  car. 


"  Oh  heart !  oh  blood  that  freezes,  blood  that  burns ! 

Earth's  returns 
For  whole  centuries  of  folly,  noise,  and  sin ! 

Shut  them  in, 
With  their  triumphs  and  their  glories  and  the  rest ! 

Love  is  best." 


Another  lover,  in  My  Star,  pours  lyric  disdain  upon 
his  friends  for  whose  purblind  common-sense  vision 
the  star  which  to  him  u  dartled  red  and  blue,"  now  a 
bird,  now  a  flower,  was  just — a  star.  More  finely 
touched  than  either  of  these  is  By  the  Fireside.  After 
One  Word  More,  to  which  it  is  obviously  akin,  it  is 
Browning's  most  perfect  rendering  of  the  luminous 
inner  world,  all-sufficing  and  self-contained,  of  a  rap- 
turous love.  The  outer  world  is  here  neither  thrust 
aside  nor  fantastically  varied  ;  it  is  drawn  into  the 
inner  world  by  taking  its  hue  and  becoming  the  con- 
fidant and  executant  of  its  will.  A  landscape  so  in- 
stinct with  the  hushed  awe  of  expectation  and  with  a 
mystic  tenderness  is  hardly  to  be  found  elsewhere  save 
in  Christabel, — 


134  BROWNING 

"  We  two  stood  there  with  never  a  third, 
But  each  by  each,  as  each  knew  well : 
The  sights  we  saw  and  the  sounds  we  heard, 
The  lights  and  the  shades  made  up  a  spell, 
Till  the  trouble  grew  and  stirred. 
****** 
**  A  moment  after,  and  hands  unseen 

Were  hanging  the  night  around  us  fast ; 
But  we  knew  that  a  bar  was  broken  between 

Life  and  life  :  we  were  mixed  at  last 
In  spite  of  the  mortal  screen. 

"  The  forests  had  done  it ;  there  they  stood ; 

We  caught  for  a  moment  the  powers  at  play : 
They  had  mingled  us  so,  for  once  and  good, 

Their  work  was  done — we  might  go  or  stay, 
They  relapsed  to  their  ancient  mood." 

By  the  Fireside  is  otherwise  memorable  as  portraying 
with  whatever  disguise  the  Italian  home-life  of  the 
poet  and  his  wife.  The  famous  description  of  "  the 
perfect  wife  "  as  she  sat 

**  Musing  by  firelight,  that  great  brow 
And  the  spirit-small  hand  propping  it, 
Yonder,  my  heart  knows  how  "  — 

remain  among  the  most  living  portraitures  of  that  ex- 
quisite but  fragile  form.  Yet  neither  here  nor  else- 
where did  Browning  care  to  dwell  upon  the  finished 
completeness  of  the  perfect  union.  His  intellectual 
thirst  for  the  problematic,  and  his  ethical  thirst  for 
the  incomplete,  combined  to  hurry  him  away  to  the 
moments  of  suspense,  big  with  undecided  or  unfulfilled 
fate.  The  lover  among  the  ruins  is  awaiting  his  mis- 
tress ;  the   rapturous   expectancy   of  another  waiting 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 35 

lover  is  sung  in  In  Three  Days,  And  from  the  fireside 
the  poet  wanders  in  thought  from  that  highest  height 
of  love  which  he  has  won  to  the  mystic  hour  before 
he  won  it,  when  the  elements  out  of  which  his  fate 
was  to  be  resolved  still  hung  apart,  awaiting  the  mag- 
ical touch,  which  might  never  be  given  :  — 

"  Oh  moment,  one  and  infinite  ! 

The  water  slips  o'er  stock  and  stone  ; 
The  West  is  tender,  hardly  bright : 

How  grey  at  once  is  the  evening  grown  — 
One  star,  its  chrysolite  ! 
****** 
"  Oh,  the  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is ! 

And  the  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away ! 
How  a  sound  shall  quicken  content  to  bliss, 

Or  a  breath  suspend  the  blood's  best  play, 
And  life  be  a  proof  of  this  !  " 

But  the  poet  who  lingered  over  these  moments  of 
suspended  fate  did  not  usually  choose  the  harmonious 
solution  of  them.  The  "  little  less  "  of  incomplete 
response  might  "  suspend  the  breath  "  of  the  lover, 
but  it  was  an  inexhaustible  inspiration  to  the  poet. 
It  provokes,  for  instance,  the  delicate  symbolism  of 
the  twin  lyrics  Love  in  a  Life  and  Life  in  a  Love, 
variations  on  the  same  theme — vain  pursuit  of  the 
averted  face — the  one  a  largo,  sad,  persistent,  dreamily 
hopeless ;  the  other  impetuous,  resolute,  glad.  The 
dreamier  mood  is  elaborated  in  the  Serenade  at  the 
Villa  and  One  Way  of  Love.  A  few  superbly  imagi- 
native phrases  bring  the  Italian  summer  night  about 
us,  sultry,  storm-shot,  starless,  still,  — 

"  Life  was  dead,  and  so  was  light." 


I36  BROWNING 

The  Serenader  himself  is  no  child  of  Italy  but  a 
meditative  Teuton,  who,  Hamlet-like,  composes  for 
his  mistress  the  answer  which  he  would  not  have  her 
give.  The  lover  in  One  Way  of  Love  is  something  of 
a  Teuton  too,  and  has  thoughts  which  break  the  ve- 
hemence of  the  impact  of  his  fate.  But  there  is  a 
first  moment  when  he  gasps  and  knits  himself  closer 
to  endure — admirably  expressed  in  the  sudden  change 
to  a  brief  trochaic  verse ;  then  the  grim  mood  is  dis- 
solved in  a  momentary  ecstasy  of  remembrance  or  of 
idea — and  the  verse,  too,  unfolds  and  releases  itself  in 
sympathy :  — 

"  She  will  not  hear  my  music  ?    So  ! 
Break  the  string  ;  fold  music's  wing  ; 
Suppose  Pauline  had  bade  me  sing !  " 

Or,  instead  of  this  systole  and  diastole  alternation,  the 
glory  and  the  pang  are  fused  and  interpenetrated  in  a 
continuous  mood.  Such  a  mood  furnishes  the  spir- 
itual woof  of  one  of  Browning's  most  consummate 
and  one  of  his  loveliest  lyrics,  The  Last  Ride  Together 
and  Evelyn  Hope.  "  How  are  we  to  take  it  ?  "  asks 
Mr.  Fotheringham  of  the  latter.  "  As  the  language 
of  passion  resenting  death  and  this  life's  woeful  in- 
completeness ?  or  as  a  provision  of  the  soul  in  a  mo- 
ment of  intensest  life  ?  "  The  question  may  be  asked  ; 
yet  the  passion  of  regret  which  glows  and  vibrates 
through  it  is  too  suffused  with  exalted  faith  in  a  final 
recovery  to  find  poignant  expression.  This  lyric, 
with  its  taking  melody,  has  delighted  thousands  to 
whom  Browning  is  otherwise  "^obscure,"  partly  because 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY 


!37 


it  appeals  with  naive  audacity  at  once  to  Romantic 
and  to  Christian  sentiment — combining  the  faith  in 
love's  power  to  seal  its  object  for  ever  as  its  own  with 
the  Christian  faith  in  personal  immortality — a  per- 
sonal immortality  in  which  there  is  yet  marrying  and 
giving  in  marriage,  as  Romance  demands.  The  Last 
Ride  Together  has  attracted  a  different  audience.  Its 
passion  is  of  a  rarer  and  more  difficult  kind,  less  ac- 
cessible to  the  love  and  less  flattering  to  the  faith  of 
common  minds.  This  lover  dreams  of  no  future  re- 
covery of  more  than  he  still  retains ;  his  love,  once 
for  all,  avails  nothing ;  and  the  secure  faith  of  Eve- 
lyn's lover,  that  "  God  creates  the  love  to  reward  the 
love,"  is  not  his.  His  mistress  will  never  "  awake 
and  remember  and  understand."  But  that  dead  form 
he  is  permitted  to  clasp ;  and  in  the  rapture  of  that 
phantom  companionship  passion  and  thought  slowly 
transfigure  and  glorify  his  fate,  till  from  the  lone  limbo 
of  outcast  lovers  he  seems  to  have  penetrated  to  the 
innermost  fiery  core  of  life,  which  art  and  poetry 
grope  after  in  vain — to  possess  that  supreme  moment 
of  earth  which,  prolonged,  is  heaven. 

"  What  if  heaven  be  that,  fair  and  strong 
At  life's  best,  with  our  eyes  upturned 
Whither  life's  flower  is  first  discerned, 

We,  fixed  so,  ever  should  so  abide  ? 
What  if  we  still  ride  on,  we  too 
With  life  for  ever  old  yet  new, 
Changed  not  in  kind  but  in  degree, 
The  instant  made  eternity,  — 
And  heaven  just  prove  that  I  and  she 

Ride,  ride  together,  for  ever  ride  ?  " 


I38  BROWNING 

The  "glory  of  failure"  is  with  Browning  a  familiar 
and  inexhaustible  theme ;  but  its  spiritual  abstraction 
here  flushes  with  the  human  glory  of  possession  ;  the 
aethereal  light  and  dew  are  mingled  with  breath  and 
blood  ;  and  in  the  wonderful  long-drawn  rhythm  of 
the  verse  we  hear  the  steady  stride  of  the  horses  as 
they  bear  their  riders  farther  and  farther  in  to  the  vi- 
sionary land  of  Romance. 

It  is  only  the  masculine  lover  whom  Browning  al- 
lows thus  to  get  the  better  of  unreturned  love.  His 
women  have  no  such  remedia  amoris;  their  heart's 
blood  will  not  transmute  into  the  ichor  of  poetry.  It 
is  women  almost  alone  who  ever  utter  the  poignancy 
of  rejected  love;  in  them  it  is  tragic,  unreflecting, 
unconsolable,  and  merciless ;  while  something  of  his 
own  elastic  buoyancy  of  intellect,  his  supple  optimism, 
his  analytic,  dissipating  fancy,  infused  itself  into  his 
portrayal  of  the  grief-pangs  of  his  own  sex.  This 
distinction  is  very  apparent  in  the  group  of  lyrics 
which  deal  with  the  less  complete  divisions  of  love. 
An  almost  oppressive  intensity  of  womanhood  pulses 
in  A  Woman's  Last  Word,  In  a  Tear,  and  Any  Wife  to 
Any  Husband:  the  first,  with  its  depth  of  self-abase- 
ment and  its  cloying  lilting  melody,  trembles,  exquisite 
as  it  is,  on  the  verge  of  the  "  sentimental."  There  is 
a  rarer,  subtler  pathos  in  Two  in  the  Campagna.  The 
outward  scene  finds  its  way  to  his  senses,  and  its 
images  make  a  language  for  his  mood,  or  else  they 
break  sharply  across  it  and  sting  it  to  a  cry.  He  feels 
the  Campagna  about  him,  with  its  tranced  immensity 
lying  bare  to  heaven  :  — 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 39 

"  Silence  and  passion,  joy  and  peace, 

An  everlasting  wash  of  air  —     .     .     . 

Such  life  here,  through  such  length  of  hours, 
Such  miracles  performed  in  play, 

Such  primal  naked  forms  of  flowers, 
Such  letting  nature  have  her  way 

While  heaven  looks  from  its  towers ;  " 

and  in  the  presence  of  that  large  sincerity  of  nature  he 
would  fain  also  "  be  unashamed  of  soul "  and  probe 
love's  wound  to  the  core.  But  the  invisible  barriers 
will  not  be  put  aside  or  transcended,  and  in  the  midst 
of  that  "  infinite  passion  "  there  remain  "  the  finite 
hearts  that  yearn."  Or  else  he  wakes  after  the  quar- 
rel in  the  blitheness  of  a  bright  dawn  :  — 

"  All  is  blue  again 
After  last  night's  rain, 
And  the  South  dries  the  hawthorn  spray. 

Only,  my  love's  away  ! 
I'd  as  lief  that  the  blue  were  grey." 

The  disasters  of  love  rarely,  with  Browning,  stir 
us  very  deeply.  His  temperament  was  too  elastic, 
his  intellect  too  resourceful,  to  enter  save  by  artificial 
processes  into  the  mood  of  blank  and  hopeless  grief. 
Tragedy  did  not  lie  in  his  blood,  and  fortune — kinder 
to  the  man  than  to  the  poet — had  as  yet  denied  him, 
in  love,  the  u  baptism  of  sorrow  "  which  has  wrung 
immortal  verse  from  the  lips  of  frailer  men.  It 
may  even  be  questioned  whether  all  Browning's 
poetry  of  love's  tragedy  will  live  as  long  as  a  few 
stanzas  of  Musset's  Nuits^ — bare,  unadorned  verses, 


140  BROWNING 

devoid  of  fancy  or  wit,  but  intense  and  penetrating 
as  a  cry  : — 

"  Ce  soir  encor  je  t'ai  vu  m'apparattre, 

C'eteit  par  une  triste  nuit. 
L'aile  des  vents  battait  a  ma  fenStre ; 

J'etais  seul,  courbe  sur  mon  lit. 
J'y  regardais  une  place  cherie, 

Tiede  encor  d'un  baiser  brulant ; 
Et  je  songeais  comme  la  femme  oublie, 
Et  je  sentais  un  lambeau  de  ma  vie, 

Qui  se  dechirait  lentement. 

"  Je  rassemblais  des  lettres  de  la  veille, 

Des  cheveux,  des  debris  d'  amour. 
Tout  ce  passe  me  criait  a  Poreille 

Ses  eternels  serments  d'un  jour. 
Je  contemplais  ces  reliques  sacrees, 

Qui  vr  e  faisaient  trembler  la  main : 
Larmes  du  cceur  par  le  coeur  devorees, 
Et  que  les  yeux  qui  les  avaient  pleurees 

Ne  reconnaitront  plus  demain  ! "  ■ 

The  same  quest  of  the  problematic  which  attracted 
Browning  to  the  poetry  of  passion  repelled  or  un- 
requited made  him  a  curious  student  also  of  fainter 
and  feebler  "  wars  of  love  " — embryonic  or  simulated 
forms  of  passion  which  stood  still  farther  from  his 
personal  experience.  A  Light  Woman,  A  Pretty 
Woman,  and  Another  Way  of  Love  are  refined  studies 
in  this  world  of  half  tones.  But  the  most  important 
and  individual  poem  of  this  group  is  The  Statue  and 
the  Bust,  an  excellent  example  of  the  union  in  Brown- 
1  Musset,  Nuit  de  dhembre.     * 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  I4I 

ing  of  the  Romantic  temper  with  a  peculiar  mastery 
of  everything  in  human  nature  which  traverses  and 
repudiates  Romance.  The  duke  and  the  lady  are 
simpler  and  slighter  Hamlets — Hamlets  who  have  no 
agonies  of  self-questioning  and  self-reproach  ;  inter- 
vening in  the  long  pageant  of  the  famous  lovers  of 
romantic  tradition  with  the  same  disturbing  shock  as 
he  in  the  bead-roll  of  heroic  avengers.  The  poet's 
indignant  denunciation  of  his  lovers  at  the  close,  ap- 
parently for  not  violating  the  vows  of  marriage,  is 
puzzling  to  readers  who  do  not  appreciate  the  extreme 
subtlety  of  Browning's  use  of  figure.  He  was  at 
once  too  much  and  too  little  of  a  casuist, — too 
habituated  to  fine  distinctions  and  too  unaware  of 
the  pitfalls  they  often  present  to  others, — to  un- 
derstand that  in  condemning  his  lovers  for  wanting 
the  energy  to  commit  a  crime  he  could  be  supposed 
to  imply  approval  of  the  crime  they  failed  to  com- 
mit. 

Lastly,  in  the  outer  periphery  of  his  love  poetry 
belong  his  rare  and  fugitive  "  dreams "  of  love. 
Women  and  Roses  has  an  intoxicating  swiftness  and 
buoyancy  of  music.  But  there  is  another  and  more 
sinister  kind  of  love-dream — the  dream  of  an  unloved 
woman.  Such  a  dream,  with  its  tragic  disillusion, 
Browning  painted  in  his  'poignant  and  original  In  a 
Balcony.  It  is  in  no*sense  a  drama,  but  a  dramatic 
incident  in  three  scenes,  affecting  the  fates  of  three 
persons,  upon  whom  the  entire  interest  is  con- 
centrated. The  three  vivid  and  impressive  char- 
acter-heads    stand    out    with    intense    and    minute 


142  BROWNING 

brilliance  from  a  background  absolutely  blank  and 
void.  Though  the  scene  is  laid  in  a  court  and  the 
heroine  is  a  queen,  there  is  no  bustle  of  political 
intrigue,  no  conflict  between  the  rival  attractions  of 
love  and  power,  as  in  Colombes  Birthday.  Love  is 
the  absorbing  preoccupation  of  this  society,  the 
ultimate  ground  of  all  undertakings.  There  is  vague 
talk  of  diplomatic  victories,  of  dominions  annexed, 
of  public  thanksgivings ;  but  the  statesman  who  has 
achieved  all  this  did  it  all  to  win  the  hand  of  a  girl, 
and  the  aged  queen  whom  he  has  so  successfully 
served  has  secretly  dreamed  all  the  time,  though  al- 
ready wedded,  of  being  his.  For  a  brilliant  young 
minister  to  fail  to  make  love  to  his  sovereign,  in  spite 
of  her  grey  hairs  and  the  marriage  law,  is  a  kind  of 
high  treason.  In  its  social  presuppositions  this  com- 
munity belongs  to  a  world  as  visionary  as  the  mystic 
dream-politics  of  M.  Maeterlinck.  But,  those  pre- 
suppositions granted,  everything  in  it  has  the  uncom- 
promising clearness  and  persuasive  reality  that  Brown- 
ing invariably  communicates  to  his  dreams.  The 
three  figures  who  in  a  few  hours  taste  the  height  of 
ecstasy  and  then  the  bitterness  of  disillusion  or 
severance,  are  drawn  with  remarkable  psychologic 
force  and  truth.  For  all  three  love  is  the  absorbing 
passion,  the  most  real  thing  in  life,  scornfully  con- 
trasted with  the  reflected  joys  of  the  painter  or  the 
poet.  Norbert's  noble  integrity  is  of  a  kind  which 
mingles  in  duplicity  and  intrigue  with  disastrous  re- 
sults ;  he  is  too  invincibly  true  to  himself  easily  to 
act  a  part;  but  he  can  control  the  secret  hunger  of 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  1 43 

his  heart  and  give  no  sign,  until  the  consummate  hour 
arrives  when  he  may 

"  resume 
Life  after  death  (it  is  no  less  than  life, 
After  such  long  unlovely  labouring  days) 
And  liberate  to  beauty  life's  great  need 
O'  the  beautiful,  which,  while  it  prompted  work, 
Suppress'd  itself  erewhile." 

In  the  ecstasy  of  release  from  that  suppression,  every 
tree  and  flower  seems  to  be  an  embodiment  of  the 
harmonious  freedom  he  had  so  long  foregone,  as 
Wordsworth,  chafing  under  his  unchartered  freedom, 
saw  everywhere  the  willing  submission  to  Duty. 
Even 

"  These  statues  round  us  stand  abrupt,  distinct, 
The  strong  in  strength,  the  weak  in  weakness  fixed, 
The  Muse  for  ever  wedded  to  her  lyre, 
Nymph,  to  her  fawn,  and  Silence  to  her  rose : 
See  God's  approval  on  his  universe  ! 
Let  us  do  so — aspire  to  live  as  these 
In  harmony  with  truth,  ourselves  being  true  !  " 

But  it  is  the  two  women  who  attract  Browning's  most 
powerful  handling.  One  of  them,  the  Queen,  has 
hardly  her  like  for  pity  and  dread.  A  "  lavish  soul  " 
long  starved,  but  kindling  into  the  ecstasy  of  girlhood 
at  the  seeming  touch  of  love ;  then,  as  her  dream  is 
shattered  by  the  indignant  honesty  of-  Norbert,  trans- 
muted at  once  into  the  daemonic  Gudrun  or  Brynhild, 
glaring  in  speechless  white-heat  and  implacable  frenzy 
upon  the  man  who  has  scorned  her  proffered  heart 


144  BROWNING 

and  the  hapless  girl  he  has  chosen.1  Between  these 
powerful,  rigid,  and  simple  natures  stands  Constance, 
ardent  as  they,  but  with  the  lithe  and  palpitating 
ardour  of  a  flame.  She  is  concentrated  Romance. 
Her  love  is  an  intense  emotion ;  but  some  of  its 
fascination  lies  in  its  secrecy, — 

■  Complots  inscrutable,  deep  telegraphs, 
Long-planned  chance  meetings,  hazards  of  a  look  " ; 

she  shrinks  from  a  confession  which  "  at  the  best " 
will  deprive  their  love  of  its  spice  of  danger  and 
make  them  even  as  their  "  five  hundred  openly  happy 
friends."  She  loves  adventure,  ruse,  and  stratagem 
for  their  own  sake.  But  she  is  also  romantically 
generous,    and    because    she    "owes    this    withered 

1  An  anecdote  to  which  Prof.  Dowden  has  lately  called  attention 
(Browning,  p.  66)  describes  Browning  in  his  last  years  as  de- 
murring to  the  current  interpretation  of  the  d'enoiiment.  Some 
one  had  remarked  that  it  was  "  a  natural  sequence  that  the  guard 
should  be  heard  coming  to  take  Norbert  to  his  doom."  "  •  Now  I 
don't  quite  think  that,'  answered  Browning,  as  if  he  were  following 
out  the  play  as  a  spectator.  '  The  queen  has  a  large  and  passion- 
ate temperament.  .  .  .  She  would  have  died  by  a  knife  in  her 
heart.  The  guard  would  have  come  to  carry  away  her  dead 
body.'  "  The  catastrophe  here  suggested  is  undoubtedly  far  finer 
tragedy.  But  we  cannot  believe  that  this  was  what  Browning 
originally  meant  to  happen.  That  Norbert  and  Constance  expect 
"  doom  "  is  obvious,  and  the  queen's  parting  "  glare  "  leaves  the 
reader  in  no  doubt  that  they  are  right.  They  may,  nevertheless, 
be  wrong ;  but  what,  then,  is  meant  by  the  coming  of  the  guard, 
and  the  throwing  open  of  the  doors  ?  The  queen  has  in  any  case 
not  died  on  the  stage,  for  she  had  left  it ;  and  if  she  died  outside, 
how  should  they  have  come  "  to  carry  away  her  dead  body  "  ? 


WEDDED    LIFE    IN    ITALY  I45 

woman   everything,"   is   eager  to    sacrifice  her  own 
hopes  of  happiness. 

Were  it  not  for  its  unique  position  in  Browning's 
poetry,  one  might  well  be  content  with  a  passing 
tribute  to  the  great  love  canticle  which  closes  Men 
and  Women — the  crown,  as  it  is  in  a  pregnant  sense 
the  nucleus,  of  the  whole.  But  here,  for  "  once,  and 
only  once,  and  for  one  only,"  not  only  the  dramatic 
instinct,  which  habitually  coloured  all  his  speech,  but 
the  reticence  which  so  hardly  permitted  it  to  disclose 
his  most  intimate  personal  emotion,  were  deliberately 
overcome — overcome,  however,  only  in  order,  as  it 
were,  to  explain  and  justify  their  more  habitual  sway. 
All  the  poetry  in  it  is  reached  through  the  endeavour 
to  find  speaking  symbols  for  a  love  that  cannot  be 
told.  The  poet  is  a  high  priest,  entering  with  awed 
steps  the  sanctuary  which  even  he  cannot  tread  with- 
out desecration  save  after  divesting  himself  of  all  that 
is  habitual  and  of  routine, — even  the  habits  of  his 
genius  and  the  routine  of  his  art.  Unable  to  divest 
himself  of  his  poetry  altogether,  for  he  has  no  other 
art,  he  lays  aside  his  habitual  dramatic  guise  to  speak, 
for  once,  not  as  Lippo,  Roland,  or  Andrea,  but  u  in 
his  true  person."  And  he  strips  ofF  the  veil  of  his  art 
and  speaks  in  his  owh  person  only  to  declare  that 
speech  is  needless,  and  to  fall  upon  that  exquisite 
symbol  of  an  esoteric  love  uncommunicated  and  incom- 
municable to  the  apprehension  of  the  world, — the 
moon's  other  face  with  all  its  u  silent  silver  lights  and 
darks,"  undreamed  of  by  any  mortal.  "  Heaven's 
gift  takes  man's  abatement,"  and  poetry  itself  may 


I46  BROWNING 

only  hint  at  the  divinity  of  perfect  love.  The  One 
Word  More  was  written  in  September,  1855,  shortly 
before  the  publication  of  the  volume  it  closed,  as  the 
old  moon  waned  over  the  London  roofs.  Less  than 
six  years  later  the  "  moon  of  poets  "  had  passed  for 
ever  from  his  ken. 


CHAPTER  V 

LONDON.       DRAMATIS  PERSON A 

Ah,  Love  !  but  a  day 

And  the  world  has  changed ! 
The  sun's  away, 

And  the  bird  estranged. 

— James  Lee's  Wife. 

That  one  Face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 
Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 
Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows. 

— Epilogue. 

The  catastrophe  of  June  29,  1861,  closed  with 
appalling  suddenness  the  fifteen  years'  married  life  of 
Browning.  "  I  shall  grow  still,  I  hope,"  he  wrote  to 
Miss  Haworth,  a  month  later,  "  but  my  root  is  taken, 
and  remains."  The  words  vividly  express  the  valour 
in  the  midst  of  desolation  which  animated  one  little 
tried  hitherto  by  sorrow.  The  Italian  home  was  shat- 
tered, and  no  thought  of  even  attempting  a  patched-up 
existence  in  its  ruined  walls  seems  to  have  occurred 
to  him  ;  even  the  neighbourhood  of  the  spot  in  which 
all  that  was  mortal  of  her  had  been  laid  had  no  power 
to  detain  him.  But  his  departure  was  no  mere  flight 
from  scenes  intolerably  dear.  He  had  their  child  to 
educate  and  his  own  life  to  fulfil,  and  he  set  himself 
with  grim  resolution  to  the  work,  as  one  who  had  in- 
deed had  everything,  but  who  was  as  little  inclined  to 

147 


I48  BROWNING 

abandon  himself  to  the  past  as  to  forget  it.  After 
visiting  his  father  in  Paris — the  "  dear  nonno "  of 
his  wife's  charming  letters1 — he  settled  in  London, 
at  first  in  lodgings,  then  at  the  house  in  Warwick 
Crescent  which  was  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  to  be 
his  home.  Something  of  that  dreary  first  winter 
found  its  way,  ten  years  later,  through  whatever  dra- 
matic disguise,  into  the  poignant  epilogue  of  Ftfine. 
Browning  had  been  that  u  Householder,"  had  gone 
through  the  dragging  days  and  nights, — 

"  All  the  fuss  and  trouble  of  street-sounds,  window-sights, 
All  the  worry  of  flapping  door  and  echoing  roof ;  and  then 
All  the  fancies," — 

perhaps,  among  them,  that  of  the  u  knock,  call,  cry," 
and  the  pang  and  rapture  of  the  visionary  meeting. 
Certainly  one  of  the  effects  of  his  loss  was  to  accen- 
tuate the  mood  of  savage  isolation  which  lurked  be- 
neath Browning's  genial  sociality.  The  world  from 
which  his  saint  had  been  snatched  looked  very  com- 
mon, sordid,  and  mean,  and  he  resented  its  intrusive- 
ness  on  occasion  with  startling  violence.  When 
proposals  were  made  in  1863  in  various  quarters  to 
publish  her  life,  he  turned  like  a  wild  beast  upon  the 
"  blackguards "  who  "  thrust  their  paws  into  his 
bowels  "  by  prying  into  his  intimacies.  To  the  last 
he  dismissed  similar  proposals  by  critics  of  the  highest 
status  with  a  cavalier  bluntness  highly  surprising  to 
persons  who  only  knew  him  as  the  man  of  punctilious 

1  His  father  beautifully  said  of  Mrs.  Browning's  portrait  that  it 
was  a  face  which  made  the  worship  of  saints  seem  possible. 


LONDON  I49 

observance  and  fastidious  good  form.  For  the  rest, 
London  contained  much  that  was  bound  by  degrees  to 
temper  the  gloom  and  assuage  the  hostility.  Florence 
and  Rome  could  furnish  nothing  like  the  circle  of 
men  of  genius  and  varied  accomplishment,  using  like 
himself  the  language  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  in 
which  he  presently  began  to  move  as  an  intimate. 
Thackeray,  Ruskin,  Tennyson,  Carlyle,  Rossetti, 
Leighton,  Woolner,  Prinsep,  and  many  more,  added 
a  kind  of  richness  to  his  life  which  during  the  last 
fifteen  years  he  had  only  enjoyed  at  intervals.  And 
the  flock  of  old  friends  who  accepted  Browning  be- 
gan to  be  reinforced  by  a  crowd  of  unknown  readers 
who  proclaimed  him.  Tennyson  was  his  loyal  com- 
rade; but  the  prestige  of  Tennyson's  popularity  had 
certainly  blocked  many  of  the  avenues  of  Browning's 
fame,  appealing  as  the  Laureate  largely  did  to  tastes  in 
poetry  which  Browning  rudely  traversed  or  ignored. 
On  the  Tennysonian  reader  pur  sang  Browning's 
work  was  pretty  sure  to  make  the  impression  so 
frankly  described  by  Frederick  Tennyson  to  his 
brother,  of  u  Chinese  puzzles,  trackless  labyrinths, 
unapproachable  nebulosities."  Even  among  these 
intimates  of  his  own  generation  were  doubtless  some 
who,  with  F.  Tennyson  again,  believed  him  to  be  "  a 
man  of  infinite  learning,  jest,  and  bonhomie,  and  a 
sterling  heart  that  reverbs  no  hollowness,"  but  who 
yet  held  "his  school  of  poetry "  to  be  "the  most 
grotesque  conceivable."  This  was  the  tone  of  the 
'Fifties,  when  Tennyson's  vogue  was  at  its  height. 
But  with  the  'Sixties  there  began  to  emerge  a  critical 


150  BROWNING 

disposition  to  look  beyond  the  trim  pleasances  of  the 
Early  Victorians  to  more  daring  romantic  adventure 
in  search  of  the  truth  that  lies  in  beauty,  and  more 
fearless  grip  of  the  beauty  that  lies  in  truth.  The 
genius  of  the  pre-Raphaelites  began  to  find  response. 
And  so  did  the  yet  richer  and  more  composite  genius 
of  Browning.  Moreover,  the  immense  vogue  won 
by  the  poetry  of  his  wife  undoubtedly  prepared  the 
way  for  his  more  difficult  but  kindred  work.  If 
Pippa  Passes  counts  for  something  in  Aurora  Leighy 
Aurora  Leigh  in  its  turn  trained  the  future  readers  of 
The  Ring  and  the  Book. 

The  altered  situation  became  apparent  on  the  pub- 
lication, in  rapid  succession,  in  1864,  of  Browning's 
Dramatis  Persona  and  Mr.  Swinburne's  Atalanta  in 
Calydon.  Both  volumes  found  their  most  enthusiastic 
readers  at  the  universities.  "  All  my  new  cultivators 
are  young  men,"  Browning  wrote  to  Adiss  Blagden ; 
adding,  with  a  touch  of  malicious  humour,  u  more 
than  that,  I  observe  that  some  of  my  old  friends  don't 
like  at  all  the  irruption  of  outsiders  who  rescue  me 
from  their  sober  and  private  approval,  and  take  those 
words  out  of  their  mouths  which  they  c  always  meant 
to  say,'  and  never  did."  The  volume  included  prac- 
tically all  that  Browning  had  actually  written  since 
1855, — less  than  a  score  of  pieces, — the  somewhat 
slender  harvest  of  nine  years.  But  during  these  later 
years  in  Italy,  as  we  have  seen,  he  had  done  little  at 
his  art;  and  after  his  return  much  time  had  been  oc- 
cupied in  projecting  the  great  scheme  of  that  which 
figures  in  his  familiar  letters  as  his  "  murder-poem," 


LONDON  I5I 

and  was  ultimately  known  as  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
As  a  whole,  the  Dramatis  Persona  stands  yet  more 
clearly  apart  from  Men  and  Women  than  that  does 
from  all  that  had  gone  before.  Both  books  contain 
some  of  his  most  magnificent  work;  but  the  earlier 
is  full  of  summer  light  and  glow,  the  later  breathes 
the  hectic  and  poignant  splendour  of  autumn.  The 
sense  of  tragic  loss  broods  over  all  its  music.  In 
lyric  strength  and  beauty  there  is  no  decay ;  but  the 
dramatic  imagination  has  certainly  lost  somewhat  of 
its  flexible  strength  and  easy  poise  of  wing :  falling 
back  now  upon  the  personal  convictions  of  the  poet, 
now  upon  the  bald  prose  of  daily  life.  Rabbi  ben 
Ezra  and  Abt  Vogler,  A  Death  in  the  Desert,  are  as 
noble  poetry  as  Andrea  del  Sarto  or  The  Grammarian's 
Funeral,  but  it  is  a  poetry  less  charged  with  the 
"  incidents  "  of  any  other  soul  than  his  own ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  Dis  Aliter  Visum  and  Youth  and  Art, 
and  others,  effective  as  they  are,  yet  move  in  an  at- 
mosphere less  remote  from  j)ros£_^haii  any  jpf  the 
songs  and  lays  of  love  which  form  one  of  the  chief 
glories  of  Men  and  Women.  _The  world  which  is 
neither_thrillingly  beautiful  nor  grofesquely  ugly,  but 
simply  poor,  unendowed,  humdrum,  finds  for  the  first 
time  a  place  in  lnT"p5erry\  Its  blankness  answered 
too  well  to  the  desolate  regard  which  in  the  early 
'Sixties  he  turned  upon  life.  The  women  are  homely, 
even  plain,  like  James  Lee's  wife,  with  her  "  coarse 
hands  and  hair,"  and  Edith  in  Too  Late,  with  her  thin, 
odd  features,  or  mediocre,  like  the  speaker  in  Dis 
Aliter   Visum ;    and    they   have    homely   names,    like 


152  BROWNING 

"  Lee  "  or  "  Lamb  "  or  "  Brown,"  not  gratuitously 
grotesque  ones  like  Blougram,  Blouphocks,  or  the 
outrageous  "  Gigadibs."  "  Sludge  "  stands  on  a  dif- 
ferent footing ;  for  it  is  dramatically  expressive,  as 
these  are  not.  The  legend  of  the  gold-haired  maiden 
of  Pornic  is  told  with  a  touch  of  harsher  cynicism 
than  was  heard  in  Galuppi's  "  chill "  music  of  the 
vanished  beauties  of  Venice.  If  we  may  by  no 
means  say  that  the  glory  of  humanity  has  faded  for 
Browning,  yet  its  glory  has  become  more  fugitive  and 
more  extrinsic, — a  "  grace  not  theirs  "  brought  by  love 
"settling  unawares"  upon  minds  "level  and  low, 
burnt  and  bare  "  in  themselves.  And  he  dwells  now 
on  desolate  and  desert  scenes  with  a  new  persistence, 
just  as  it  was  wild  primitive  nooks  of  the  French 
coast  which  now  became  his  chosen  summer  resorts 
in  place  of  the  semi-civic  rusticity  which  had  been  his 
choice  in  Italy.  "  This  is  a  wild  little  place  in  Brit- 
tany," he  wrote  to  Miss  Blagden  in  August,  1863; 
"  close  to  the  sea,  a  hamlet  of  a  dozen  houses,  per- 
fectly lonely — one  may  walk  on  the  edge  of  the  low 
rocks  by  the  sea  for  miles.  ...  If  I  could  I 
would  stay  just  as  I  am  for  many  a  day.  I  feel  out 
of  the  very  earth  sometimes  as  I  sit  here  at  the  win- 
dow." The  wild  coast  scenery  falls  in  with  the  deso- 
late mood  of  James  Lee's  wife;  the  savage  luxuriance 
of  the  Isle  with  the  primitive  fancies  of  Caliban;  the 
arid  desert  holds  in  its  embrace,  like  an  oasis,  the 
well-spring  of  Love  which  flows  from  the  lips  of  the 
dying  Apostle.  In  the  poetry  of  Men  and  Women  we 
see   the    ripe    corn    and   the    flowers    in   bloom ;    in 


LONDON 


x53 


Dramatis  Persons  the  processes  of  Nature  are  less 
spontaneous  and,  as  it  were,  less  complete ;  the  desert 
and  the  abounding  streams,  the  unreclaimed  human 
nature  and  the  fertilising  grace  of  love,  emerge  in  a 
nearer  approach  to  elemental  nakedness,  and  there  are 
moods  in  which  each  appears  to  dominate.  Doubtless 
the  mood  which  finally  triumphed  was  that  of  the 
dying  John  and  of  the  Third  Speaker ;  but  it  was  a 
triumph  no  longer  won  by  "  the  happy  prompt  in- 
stinctive way  of  youth,"  and  the  way  to  it  lay  through 
moods  not  unlike  those  of  James  Lee's  wife,  whose 
problem,  like  his  own,  was  how  to  live  when  the  an- 
swering love  was  gone.  His  "  fire,"  like  hers,  was 
made  "  of  shipwreck  wood,"  !  and  her  words  "  at  the 
window  "  can  only  be  an  echo  of  his  — 

"  Ah,  Love  !  but  a  day 

And  the  world  has  changed ! 

The  sun's  away, 

And  the  bird  estranged  ; 

The  wind  has  dropped, 
And  the  sky's  deranged  : 

Summer  has  stopped." 

As  her  problem  is  another  life-setting  of  his,  so  she 
feels  her  way  towards  its  solution  through  processes 
which  cannot  have  been  strange  to  him.  She  walks 
"  along  the  Beach,"  or  "  on  the  Cliff,"  or  "  among  the 

1  The  second  section  of  James  Lee's  Wife,  By  the  Fireside,  can- 
not have  been  written  without  a  conscious,  and  therefore  a  pur- 
posed and  significant,  reference  to  the  like-named  poem  in  Men 
and  Women,  which  so  exquisitely  plays  with  the  intimate  scenery 
of  his  home-life. 


154  BROWNING 

rocks,"  and  the  voices  of  sea  and  wind  ("  Such  a  soft 
sea  and  such  a  mournful  wind  !  "  he  wrote  to  Miss 
Blagden)  become  speaking  symbols  in  her  preoccupied 
mind.  Not  at  all,  however,  in  the  fashion  of  the 
"  pathetic  fallacy."  She  is  too  deeply  disenchanted  to 
imagine  pity  ;  and  Browning  puts  into  her  mouth  (part 
vi.)  a  significant  criticism  of  some  early  stanzas  of  his 
own,  in  which  he  had  in  a  buoyant  optimistic  fashion 
interpreted  the  wailing  of  the  wind.1  If  Nature  has 
aught  to  teach,  it  is  the  sterner  doctrine,  that  nothing 
endures ;  that  Love,  like  the  genial  sunlight,  has  to 
glorify  base  things,  to  raise  the  low  nature  by  its  throes, 
sometimes  divining  the  hidden  spark  of  God  in  what 
seemed  mere  earth,  sometimes  only  lending  its  transient 
splendour  to  a  dead  and  barren  spirit, — the  fiery  grace 
of  a  butterfly  momentarily  obliterating  the  dull  turf  or 
rock  it  lights  on,  but  leaving  them  precisely  what  they 
were. 

parries  Lee's  Wife  is  a  type  of  the  other  idyls  of  love 
which  form  so  large  a  part  of  the  Dramatis  Persona. 
The  note  of  dissonance,  of  loss,  which  they  sound  had 
been  struck  by  Browning  before,  but  never  with  the 
same  persistence  and  iteration.  The  Dramatic  Lyrics 
and  Men  and  Women  are  not  quite  silent  of  the  tragic 
failure  of  love ;  but  it  is  touched  lightly  in  "  swallow 
flights  of  song,"  like  the  Lost  Mistress,  that  "dip  their 
wings  in  tears  and  skim  away."  And  the  lovers  are 
spiritual  athletes,  who  can  live  on  the  memory  of  a 
look,  and  seem  to  be  only  irradiated,  not  scorched,  by 
the  tragic  flame.  But  these  lovers  of  the  'Sixties  are 
1  Cf.  supra,  p.  1 6. 


LONDON  I55 

of  less  aethereal  temper ;  they  are  more  obviously, 
familiarly  human ;  the  loss  of  what  they  love  comes 
home  to  them,  and  there  is  agony  in  the  purifying  fire. 
Such  are  the  wronged  husband  in  The  Worst  of  It,  and 
the  finally  frustrated  lover  in  Too  Late.  In  the  group 
of  "  Mig"ht-have-been  "  lyrics  the  sense  of  loss  is  less 
poignant  and  tragic  but  equally  uncompensated.  u  You 
fool  !  "  cries  the  homely  little  heroine  of  Dis  Aliter 
Visum  to  the  elderly  scholar  who  ten  years  before  had 
failed  to  propose  to  her, — 

"  You  fool  for  all  your  lore  !     .     .     . 
The  devil  laughed  at  you  in  his  sleeve  ! 
You  knew  not  ?     That  I  well  believe ; 
Or  you  had  saved  two  souls ; — nay,  four." 

Nor  is  there  much  of  the  glory  of  failure  in  Kate 
Brown's  bitter  smile,  as  she  sums  up  the  story  of  Youth 
and  Art :  — 

"  Each  life  unfulfilled,  you  see  ; 

It  hangs  still,  patchy  and  scrappy, 
We  have  not  sighed  deep,  laughed  free, 
Starved,  feasted,  despaired, — been  happy." 

It  is  no  accident  that  with  the  clearer  recognition  of 
sharp  and  absolute  loss  Browning  shows  increasing  pre- 
occupation with  the  thought  of  recovery  after  death. 
For  himself  death  was  now  inseparably  intertwined  with 
all  that  he  had  known  of  love,  and  the  prospect  of  the 
supreme  reunion  which  death,  as  he  believed,  was  to 
bring  him,  drew  it  nearer  to  the  core  of  his  imagina- 
tion and   passion.     Not  that  he  looked  forward  to  it 


I56  BROWNING 

with  the  easy  complacency  of  the  hymn-writer.  Pros- 
pice  would  not  be  the  great  uplifting  song  it  is  were 
the  note  of  struggle,  of  heroic  heart  to  bear  the  brunt 
and  pay  in  one  moment  all  "  life's  arrears  of  pain,  dark- 
ness, and  cold,"  less  clearly  sounded  ;  and  were  the  final 
cry  less  intense  with  the  longing  of  bereavement.  How 
near  this  thought  of  rapturous  reunion  lay  to  the 
springs  of  Browning's  imagination  at  this  time,  how 
instantly  it  leapt  into  poetry,  may  be  seen  from  the 
Eurydice  to  Orpheus  which  he  fitly  placed  immediately 
after  these  — 

"  But  give  them  me,  the  mouth,  the  eyes,  the  brow  ! 
Let  them  once  more  absorb  me  !  " 

But  in  two  well-known  poems  of  the  Dramatis  Per- 
sons Browning  has  splendidly  unfolded  what  is  implicit 
in  the  strong  simple  clarion-note  of  Prospice.  Abt 
Vogler  and  Rabbi  ben  Ezra  are  among  the  surest 
strongholds  of  his  popular  fame.  Rabbi  ben  Ezra  is  a 
great  song  of  life,  bearing  more  fully  perhaps  than  any 
other  poem  the  burden  of  what  he  had  to  say  to  his 
generation,  but  lifted  far  above  mere  didacticism  by 
the  sustained  glow  in  which  ethical  passion,  and  its 
imaginative  splendour,  indistinguishably  blend.  It  is 
not  for  nothing  that  Browning  put  this  loftiest  utter- 
ance of  all  that  was  most  strenuous  in  his  own  faith 
into  the  mouth  of  a  member  of  the  race  which  has  be- 
yond others  known  how  to  suffer  and  how  to  transfigure 
its  suffering.  Ben  Ezra's  thoughts  are  not  all  Hebraic, 
but  they  are  conceived  in  the  most  exalted  temper  of 
Hebrew   prophecy;  blending    the    calm    of  achieved 


LONDON 


*57 


wisdom  with  the  fervour  of  eagerly  accepted  discipline, 
imperious  scorn  for  the  ignorance  of  fools,  and  heroic 
ardour  for  the  pangs  and  throes  of  the  fray.  Ideals 
which,  coolly  analysed,  seem  antithetical,  and  which 
have  in  reality  inspired  opposite  ways  of  life,  meet  in 
the  fusing  flame  of  the  Rabbi's  impassioned  thought : 
the  body  is  the  soul's  beguiling  sorceress,  but  also  its 
helpful  comrade ;  man  is  the  passive  clay  which  the 
great  Potter  moulded  and  modelled  upon  the  Wheel 
of  Time,  and  yet  is  bidden  rage  and  strive,  the  ador- 
ing acquiescence  of  Eastern  Fatalism  mingling  with 
the  Western  gospel  of  individual  energy.  And  all  this 
complex  and  manifold  ethical  appeal  is  conveyed  in 
verse  of  magnificent  volume  and  resonance,  effacing 
by  the  swift  recurrent  anvil  crash  of  its  rhythm  any 
suggestion  that  the  acquiescence  of  the  "  clay  "  means 
passivity. 

In  Abt  Vogler  the  prophetic  strain  is  even  more 
daring  and  assured ;  only  it  springs  not  from  "  old 
experience,"  but  from  the  lonely  ecstasy  of  artistic 
creation.  Browning  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  his  old 
Catholic  musician  the  most  impassioned  and  undoubt- 
ing  assertion  to  be  found  in  his  work  of  his  faith  that 
nothing  good  is  finally  lost.  The  Abbe's  theology 
may  have  supplied  the  substance  of  the  doctrine,  but 
it  could  not  supply  the  beautiful,  if  daring,  expansion 
of  it  by  which  the  immortality  of  men's  souls  is  ex- 
tended to  u  all  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed 
of  good."  This  was  the  work  of  music;  and  the 
poem  is  in  truth  less  remarkable  for  this  rapturous 
statement  of  fate  than  for  the  penetrating  power  with 


I58  BROWNING 

which  the  mystical  and  transcendental  suggestions  of 
music  are  explored  and  unfolded, — the  mysterious 
avenues  which  it  seems  to  open  to  kinds  of  experience 
more  universal  than  ours,  exempt  from  the  limitations 
of  our  narrow  faculties,  even  from  the  limitations  of 
time  and  space  themselves.  All  that  is  doctrinal  and 
speculative  in  Abt  Vogler  is  rooted  in  musical  expe- 
rience,— the  musical  experience,  no  doubt,  of  a  richly 
imaginative  mind,  for  which  every  organ-note  turns 
into  the  symbol  of  a  high  romance,  till  he  sees  heaven 
itself  yearning  down  to  meet  his  passion  as  it  seeks 
the  sky.  Of  the  doctrine  and  speculation  we  may 
think  as  we  will ;  of  the  psychological  force  and  truth 
of  the  whole  presentment  there  can  be  as  little  ques- 
tion as  of  its  splendour  and  glow.  It  has  the  sinew, 
as  well  as  the  wing,  of  poetry.  And  neither  in  poetry 
nor  in  prose  has  the  elementary  marvel  of  the  simplest 
musical  form  been  more  vividly  seized  than  in  the 
well-known  couplet  — 

"  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed  to  man 
That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame,  not  a  fourth  sound,  but  a 
star." 

A  Death  in  the  Desert,  though  a  poem  of  great 
beauty,  must  be  set,  in  intrinsic  value,  below  these 
two.  To  attack  Strauss  through  the  mouth  of  the 
dying  apostle  was  a  smart  pamphleteering  device ;  but 
it  gave  his  otherwise  noble  verse  a  disagreeable  twang 
of  theological  disputation,  and  did  no  manner  of  harm 
to  Strauss,  who  had  to  be  met  on  other  ground  and 
with  other  weapons, — the  weapons  of  history  and  com- 


LONDON  I59 

parative  religion — in  which  Browning's  skill  was  that 
only  of  a  brilliant  amateur.  But  the  impulse  which 
created  it  had  deeper  springs  than  this.  What  is  most 
clearly  personal  and  most  deeply  felt  in  it  is  the  exal- 
tation of  love,  which  seems  to  have  determined  the 
whole  imaginative  fabric.  Love,  Browning's  highest 
expression  of  spiritual  vitality,  was  the  cardinal  prin- 
ciple of  his  creed ;  God  was  vital  to  him  only  as  a 
loving  God,  and  Christ  only  as  the  human  embodi- 
ment and  witness  of  God's  love.  The  traditional 
story  of  Christ  was  in  this  sense  of  profound  sig- 
nificance for  him,  while  he  turned  away  with  indiffer- 
ence or  disgust  from  the  whole  doctrinal  apparatus  of 
the  Atonement,  which,  however  closely  bound  up 
with  the  popular  conception  of  God's  love,  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  his  conception  of  it,  and  he  could  thus 
consistently  decline  the  name  of  Christian,  as  some 
witnesses  aver  that  he  did.1  It  was  thus  in  entire 
keeping  with  his  way  of  approaching  Christianity  that 
he  imagined  this  moving  episode, — the  dying  apostle 
whose  genius  had  made  that  way  so  singularly  per- 
suasive, the  little  remnant  of  doomed  and  hunted 
fugitives  who  seem  to  belong  to  earth  only  by  the 
spiritual  bond  of  their  love  to  him,  as  his  own  physical 
life  is  now  a  firebrand  all  but  extinct, — "all  ashes 
save  the  tip  that  holds  a  spark,"  but  that  still  glowing 
with  undiminished  soul.  The  material  fabric  which 
enshrines  this  fine  essence  of  the  Christian  spirit  is 
of  the  frailest ;  and  the  contrast  is  carried  out  in  the 

1  Other  testimony,  it  is  true,  equally  strong,  asserts  that  he  ac- 
cepted the  name  ;  in  any  case  he  used  it  in  a  sense  of  his  own. 


l6o  BROWNING 

scenic  setting, — the  dim  cool  cavern,  with  its  shadowy 
depth  and  faint  glimmerings  of  day,  the  hushed  voices, 
the  ragged  herbage,  and  the  glory  in  the  face  of  the 
passing  saint  within  ;  without,  the  hard  dazzling  glare 
of  the  desert  noon,  and  the  burning  blue,  and  the. 
implacable  and  triumphant  might  of  Rome. 

The  discourse  of  the  "  aged  friend  "  is  full  of  subtle 
and  vivid  thinking,  and  contains  some  of  Browning's 
most  memorable  utterances  about  Love,  in  particular 
the  noble  lines  — 

"  For  life  with  all  it  yields  of  joy  and  woe     .     .     . 
Is  just  our  chance  of  the  prize  of  learning  love, 
How  love  might  be,  hath  been  indeed,  and  is." 

Nowhere,  either,  do  we  see  more  clearly  how  this 
master-conception  of  his  won  control  of  his  reasoning 
powers,  framing  specious  ladders  to  conclusions 
towards  which  his  whole  nature  yearned,  but  which 
his  vision  of  the  world  did  not  uniformly  bear  out. 
Man  loved,  and  God  w*Ould  not  be  above  man  if  he 
did  not  also  love.  The  horrible  spectre  of  a  God 
who  has  power  without  love  never  ceased  to  lurk  in 
the  background  of  Browning's  thought,  and  he  strove 
with  all  his  resources  of  dialectic  and  poetry  to  exor- 
cise it.  And  no  wonder.  For  a  loving^Qod  was  the 
very  keystone  of  Browning's  scheme  of  life  and  of  the 
world,  and  its  withdrawal  would  have  meant  for  him 
the  collapse  of  the  whole  structure. 

It  is  no  accident  that  the  Death  in  the  Desert  is  fol- 
lowed immediately  by  a  theological  study  in  a  very 
different  key,  Caliban  upon  Setebos.     For  in  this  bril- 


LONDON  l6l 

liantly  original  a  dramatic  monologue  "  Caliban — the 
"savage  man" — appears  "mooting  the  point  cWhat 
is  God  ? '  "  and  constructing  his  answer  frankly  from 
his  own  nature.  It  was  quite  in  Browning's  way  to 
take  a  humorous  delight  in  imagining  grotesque  par- 
allels to  ideas  and  processes  in  which  he  profoundly 
believed ;  a  proclivity  aided  by  the  curious  subtle  rela- 
tion between  his  grotesquerie  and  his  seriousness, 
which  makes  Pacchiarotto,  for  instance,  closely  similar 
in  effect  to  parts  of  Christmas- Eve.  Browning  is  one  1 
of  three  or  four  sons  of  the  nineteenth  century  who 
dared  to  fill  in  the  outlines,  or  to  complete  the  half- 
told  tale,  of  Shakespeare's  Caliban.1  Renan's  hero  is 
the  quondam  disciple  of  Stephano  and  Trinculo,  fin- 
ished and  matured  in  the  corrupt  mob-politics  of 
Europe ;  a  caustic  symbol  of  democracy,  as  Renan 
saw  it,  alternately  trampling  on  and  patronising  cul- 
ture. Brownjng's  Caliban  is  far  truer  to  Shake-  1 
speare's  conception  ;  he  is  the  Caliban  of  Shakespeare, 
not  followed  into  a  new  phase  but  observed  in  a  dif-  \ 
ferent  attitude, — Caliban  of  the  days  before  the  Storm, 
an  unsophisticated  creature  of  the  island,  inaccessible 
to  the  wisdom  of  Europe,  and  not  yet  the  dupe  of  its 
vice.  His  wisdom,  his  science,  his  arts,  are  all  his 
own.  He  anticipates  the  heady  joy  of  Stephano's  bot- 
tle with  a  mash  of  gourds  of  his  own  invention.  And 
his  religion  too  is  his  own, — no  decoction  from  any 
of  the  recognised  vintages  of  religious  thought,  but  a 
home-made  brew  cunningly  distilled  from  the  teeming 

1  It  is  characteristic  that  M.  Maeterlinck  found  no  place  for  Cali- 
ban in  his  striking  fantasia  on  the  Tempest,  Joyzelle. 


l62  BROWNING 

animal  and  plant  life  of  the  Island.  It  is  a  mistake  to 
call  Caliban's  theology  a  study  of  primitive  religion ; 
for  primitive  religion  is  inseparable  from  the  primitive 
tribe,  and  Caliban  the  savage,  who  has  never  known 
society,  was  a  conception  as  unhistorical  as  it  was  ex- 
quisitely adapted  to  the  individualist  ways  of  Brown- 
ing's imagination.  Tradition  and  prescription,  which 
fetter  the  savage  with  iron  bonds,  exist  for  Caliban 
only  in  the  form  of  the  faith  held  by  his  dam,  which 
he  puts  aside  in  the  calm  decisive  way  of  a  modern 
thinker,  as  one  who  has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  pen- 
alties of  heresy,  and  has  even  outlived  the  exultation 
of  free  thought : 

"  His  dam  held  that  the  Quiet  made  all  things 
Which  Setebos  vexed  only  :  'holds  not  so  ; 
Who  made  them  weak,  made  weakness  He  might  vex." 

V  Caliban's  theology  has,  moreover,  very  real  points  of 
contact  with  Browning's  own.  His  god  is  that  sheer 
Power  which  Browning  from  the  first  recognised  ;  it 
is  because  Setebos  feels  heat  and  cold,  and  is  therefore 
a  weak  creature  with  ungratified  wants,  that  Caliban 
decides  there  must  be  behind  him  a  divinity  that  "  all 
it  hath  a  mind  to,  doth."      Caliban  is  one  of  Brown- 

V  ing's  most  consummate  realists  ;  he  has  the  remorse- 
lessly vivid  perceptions  of  a  Lippo  Lippi  and  a  Sludge. 
Browning's  wealth  of  recondite  animal  and  plant  lore 
is  nowhere  else  so  amazingly  displayed ;  the  very 
character  of  beast  or  bird  will  be  hit  off  in  a  line, — as 
the  pie  with  the  long  tongue 


LONDON  163 

"  That  pricks  deap  into  oakwarts  for  a  worm, 
And  says  a  plain  word  when  she  finds  her  prize," 

or  the  lumpish  sea-beast  which  he  blinded  and  called 
Caliban  (an  admirable  trait)  — 

"  A  bitter  heart  that  bides  its  time  and  bites." 

And  all  this  curious  scrutiny  is  reflected  in  Caliban's 
god.     The  sudden  catastrophe  at  the  close 

("  What,  what  ?    A  curtain  o'er  the  world  at  once  !  ") 


is  one  of  Browning's  most  superb  surprises,  breaking 
in  upon  the  leisured  ease  of  theory  with  the  sudden- 
ness of  a  horrible  practical  emergency,  and  compelling 
Caliban,  in  the  act  of  repudiating  his  theology,  to  pro- 
vide its  most  vivid  illustration. 

Shakespeare,  with  bitter  irony,  brought  his  half- 
taught  savage  into  touch  with  the  scum  of  modern 
civilisation,  and  made  them  conspire  together  against 
its  benignity  and  wisdom.  The  reader  is  apt  to  re- 
member this  conjunction  when  he  passes  from  Caliban 
to  Mr.  Sludge.  Stephano  and  Trinculo,  almost  alone 
among  Shakespeare's  rascals,  are  drawn  without 
geniality,  and  Sludge  is  the  only  one  of  Browning's 
u  casuists  "  whom  he  treats  with  open  scorn.  That 
some  of  the  effects  were  palpably  fraudulent,  and 
that,  fraud  apart,  there  remained  a  residuum  of  phe- 
nomena not  easy  to  explain,  were  all  irritating  facts. 
Yet  no  one  can  mistake  Sludge  for  an  outflow  of  per- 


164  BROWNING 

sonal  irritation,  still  less  for  an  act  of  literary  venge- 
ance upon  the  impostor  who  had  beguiled  the  lofty 
and  ardent  intelligence  of  his  wife.  The  resentful 
husband  is  possibly  there,  but  so  elementary  an  emo- 
tion could  not  possibly  have  taken  exclusive  possession 
of  Browning's  complex  literary  faculty,  or  baulked  the 
eager  speculative  curiosity  which  he  brought  to  all 
new  and  problematic  modes  of  mind.  His  attitude 
towards  spiritualism  was  in  fact  the  product  of 
strangely  mingled  conditions.  Himself  the  most  con- 
vinced believer  in  spirit  among  the  poets  of  his  time, 
he  regarded  the  bogus  demonstrations  of  the  "  spir- 
itualist "  somewhat  as  the  intellectual  sceptic  regards 
the  shoddy  logic  by  which  the  vulgar  unbeliever 
proves  there  is  no  God.  But  even  this  anger  had  no 
secure  tenure  in  a  nature  so  rich  in  solvents  for  dis- 
dain. It  is  hard  to  say  where  scorn  ends  and  sympathy 
begins,  or  where  the  indignation  of  the  believer  who 
sees  his  religion  travestied  passes  over  into  the  curious 
interest  of  the  believer  who  recognises  its  dim  dis- 
torted reflection  in  the  unlikeliest  quarters.  But 
Sludge  is  clearly  permitted,  like  Blougram  before  and 
Juan  and  Hohenstiel-Schwangau  after  him,  to  assume 
in  good  faith  positions,  or  at  least  to  use,  with  perfect 
sincerity,  language,  which  had  points  of  contact  with 
Browning's  own.  He  has  an  eye  for  "  spiritual 
facts  "  none  the  less  genuine  in  its  gross  way  that  it 
has  been  acquired  in  the  course  of  professional  train- 
ing, and  is  valued  as  a  professional  asset.  But  his 
supernaturalism  at  its  best  is  devoid  of  spiritual  qual- 
ity.    His  "  spiritual  facts  "  are  collections  of  miracu- 


LONDON  165 

lous  coincidences  raked  together  by  the  anteater's 
tongue  of  a  cool  egoist,  who  waits  for  them 

"  lazily  alive, 
Open-mouthed,     .     .     . 
Letting  all  nature's  loosely  guarded  motes 
Settle  and^§]ick,  be  swallowed." 

Like  Caliban,  who  also  finds  the  anteater  an  instruc- 
tive symbol,  he  sees  "  the  supernatural  "  everywhere, 
and  everywhere  concerned  with  himself.  But  Cali- 
ban's religion  of  terror,  cunning,  and  cajolery  is  more 
estimable  than  kludge's  businesslike  faith  in  the  virtue 
of  wares  for  which  he  finds  so  profitable  a  market,  and 
which  he  gets  on  such  easy  terms.  /Caliban  trem- 
blingly does  his  best  to  hitch  his  wagon  to  Setebos's 
star — when  Setebos  is  looking ;  Sludge  is  convinced 
that  the  stars  are  once  for  all  hitched  to  his  waggon  ; 
that  heaven  is  occupied  in  catering  for  his'  appetite 
and  becoming  an  accomplice  in  his  sins.  Sludge's 
spiritual  world  was  genuine  for  him,  but  it  had  noth- 
ing but  the  name  in  common  with  that  of  the  poet  of 
Ben  Ezra,  and  of  the  Epilogue  which  immediately 
follows. l 

This    Epilogue    is    one    of    the   few   utterances   in 

1  The  foregoing  account  assumes  that  the  poem  was  not  written, 
as  is  commonly  supposed,  in  Florence  in  1859-60,  but  after  his  set- 
tlement in  London.  The  only  ground  for  the  current  view  is  Mrs. 
Browning's  mention  of  his  having  been  "  working  at  a  long  poem  " 
that  winter  {Letters,  May  18,  i860).  I  am  enabled,  by  the  kind- 
ness of  Prof.  Hall  Griffin,  to  state  that  an  unpublished  letter  from 
Browning  to  Buchanan  in  1871  shows  this  "  long  poem  "  to  have 
been  one  on  Napoleon  III  (cf.  above,  p.  89).  Some  of  it  prob- 
ably appears  in  Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 


1 66  BROWNING 

which  Browning  draws  the  ambiguous  dramatic  veil 
from  his  personal  faith.  That  he  should  choose  this 
moment  of  parting  with  the  reader  for  such  a  confes- 
sion confirms  one's  impression  that  the  focus  of  his 
interest  in  poetry  now,  more  than  ever  before,  lay 
among  those  problems  of  life  and  death,  of  God  and 
man,  to  which  nearly  all  the  finest  work  of  this  col- 
lection is  devoted.  Far  more  emphatically  than  in 
the  analogous  Christmas-Eve^  Browning  resolves  not 
only  the  negations  of  critical  scholarship  but  the 
dogmatic  affirmations  of  the  Churches  into  symptoms 
of  immaturity  in  the  understanding  of  spiritual 
things;  in  the  knowledge  how  heaven's  high  with 
earth's  low  should  intertwine.  The  third  speaker 
voices  the  manifold  protest  of  the  nineteenth  century 
against  all  theologies  built  upon  an  aloofness  of  the 
divine  and  human,  whether  the  aloof  God  could  be 
reached  by  special  processes  and  ceremonies,  or 
whether  he  was  a  bare  abstraction,  whose  "  pale 
bliss "  never  thrilled  in  response  to  human  hearts. 
The  best  comment  upon  his  faith  is  the  saying  of 
Meredith.  "  The  fact  that  character  can  be  and  is  de- 
veloped by  the  clash  of  circumstances  is  to  me  a 
warrant  for  infinite  hope." l  Only,  for  Browning, 
that  "  infinite  hope "  translates  itself  into  a  sense 
of  present  divine  energies  bending  all  the  clashing 
circumstance  to  its  benign  end,  till  the  walls  of 
the  world  take  on  the  semblance  of  the  shattered 
Temple,  and  the  crowded  life  within  them  the 
semblance  of  the  seemingly  vanished  Face,  which 
1  Quoted  Int.  Journ.  of  Ethics ;  April,  1902. 


LONDON  167 

"  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 
Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 
Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows." * 

1  The  last  line  is  pantheistic  in  expression,  and  has  been  so 
understood  by  some,  particularly  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson.  But 
pantheism  was  at  most  a  tendency,  which  the  stubborn  concrete- 
ness  of  his  mind  held  effectually  in  check ;  a  point,  one  might  say, 
upon  which  his  thinking  converges,  but  which  it  never  even 
proximately  attains.  God  and  the  Soul  never  mingle,  however 
intimate  their  communion  (cf.  chap.  x.  below.) 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK 

Tout  passe. — L'art  robuste 
Seul  a  Teternite. 

Le  buste 
Survit  a.  la  cite. 
Et  la  medaille  austere 
Que  trouve  un  laboureur 

Soils  terre 
Revele  uJHipereur. 

— GAUTIER:  VArt. 


After  four  years  of  silelbe,  the  Dramatis  Persona 
waS  followed  by  The  King  and  the  Book.  This 
monumental  poem,  in  some  respects  his  culminating 
achievement,  has  its  roots  in  an  earlier  stratum  of 
his  life  than  its  predecessor.  There  is  little  here  to 
recall  the  characteristic  moods  of  his  first  years  of 
desolate  widowerhood-*-the  valiant  Stoicism,  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  sombre  present,  the  great  forward 
gaze  upon  the  world  beyont^i  |We  are  in  Italy  once 
more,  our  senses  tingle  with  its  glowing  prodigality 
of  day,  we  jostle  the  teeming  throng  of  the  Roman 
streets,  and  are  drawn  into  the  vortex  of  a  vast  de- 
bate which  seems  to  occupy  the  entire  community, 
and  which  turns,  not  upon  immortality,  or  spiritual- 
ism, or  the  nature  of  God,  or  the  fate  of  man,  but 
on  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  actors  in  one  pitiful 
drama, — a  priest,  a  noble,  an  illiterate  girl. 
1 68  ^— • — - 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK 


l6| 


With  the  analytic  exuberance  of  one  to  whom  the 
processes  of  Art  were  yet  more  fascinating  than  its 
products,  Browning  has  described  how  he  discovered 
this  forgotten  tale  and  forged  its  glowing  metal  into 
the  Ring,  The  chance  finding  of  an  "  old  square 
yellow  book  "  which  aroused  his  curiosity  among  the 
frippery  of  a  Florentine  stall,  was  as  grotesquely 
casual  an  inception  as  poem  ever  had.  But  it  was 
one  of  those  accidents  which,  suddenly  befalling  a 
creative  mind,  organise  its  loose  and  scattered  material 
with  a  magical  potency  unattainable  by  prolonged 
cogitation.  The  story  of  Pompilia  took  shape  in 
the  gloom  and  glare  of  a  stormy  Italian  night  of 
June,  i860,  as  he  watched  from  the  balcony  of 
Casa  Guidi.  The  patient  elaboration  of  after-years 
wrought  into  consummate  expressiveness  the  donn'ee 
of  that  hour.  But  the  conditions  under  which  the 
elaboration  was  carried  out  were  pathetically  unlike 
those  of  the  primal  vision.  Before  the  end  of  June 
in  the  following  year  Mrs.  Browning  died,  and 
Browning  presently  left  Florence  for  ever.  For  the 
moment  all  the  springs  of  poetry  were  dried  up,  and 
it  is  credible  enough  that,  as  Mrs.  Orr  says,  Brown- 
ing abandoned  all  thought  of  a  poem,  and  even 
handed  over  his  material  to  another.  But  within  a 
few  months,  it  is  clear,  the  story  of  Pompilia  not 
merely  recovered  its  hold  upon  his  imagination,  but 
gathered  a  subtle  hallowing  association  with  what  was 
most  spiritual  in  that  vanished  past  of  which  it  was 
the  last  and  most  brilliant  gift. I  The  poem  which 
enshrined   Pompilia  was  thus  instinct  with  reminis- 


170  BROWNING 

cence;  it  was,  with  all  its  abounding  vitality,  yet 
commemorative  and  memorial ;  and  we  understand 
how  Browning,  no  friend  of  the  conventions  of 
poetic  art,  entered  on  and  closed  his  giant  task  with 
an  invocation  to  the  "  Lyric  Love,"  as  it  were  the 
Urania,  or  heavenly  Muse,  of  a  modern  epic. 

The  definite  planning  of  the  poem  in  its  present 
shape  belongs  to  the  autumn  of  1862.  In  September, 
1862,  he  wrote  to  Miss  Blagden  from  Biarritz  of  "my 
new  poem  which  is  about  to  be,  and  of  which  the 
whole  is  pretty  well  in  my  head — the  Roman  murder- 
story,  you  know."  !  After  the  completion  of  the 
Dramatis  Persona  in  1863-64,  the  "  Roman  murder- 
story  "  became  his  central  occupation.  To  it  three 
quiet  early  morning  hours  were  daily  given,  and  it 
grew  steadily  under  his  hand.  For  the  rest  he  began 
to  withdraw  from  his  seclusion,  to  mix  freely  in  so- 
ciety, to  "live  and  like  earth's  way."  He  talked 
openly  among  his  literary  friends  of  the  poem  and  its 
progress,  rumour  and  speculation  busied  themselves 
with  it  as  never  before  with  work  of  his,  and  the 
literary  world  at  large  looked  for  its  publication  with 
eager  and  curious  interest.  At  length,  in  November, 
1868,  the  first  instalment  was  published.     It  was  re- 

1  W.  M.  Rossetti  reports  Browning  to  have  told  him,  in  a  call, 
March  15,  1868,  that  he  "  began  it  in  October,  1864.  Was  staying 
at  Bayonne,  and  walked  out  to  a  mountain-gorge  traditionally  said 
to  have  been  cut  or  kicked  out  by  Roland,  and  there  laid  out  the 
full  plan  of  his  twelve  cantos,  accurately  carried  out  in  the  execu- 
tion." The  date  is  presumably  an  error  of  Rossetti's  for  1862 
{Rossetti' s  Papers,  p.  302).  Cf.  Letter  of  Sept.  29,  1862  (Orr, 
p.  259). 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  I7I 

ceived  by  the  most  authoritative  part  of  the  press  with 
outspoken,  even  dithyrambic  eulogies,  in  which  the 
severely  judicial  Athenaum  took  the  lead.  Confirmed 
sceptics  or  deriders,  like  Edward  FitzGerald,  rubbed 
their  eyes  and  tried  once  again,  in  vain,  to  make  the 
old  barbarian's  verses  construe  and  scan.  To  critics 
trained  in  classical  traditions  the  original  structure  of 
the  poem  was  extremely  disturbing;  and  most  of 
FitzGerald's  friends  shared,  according  to  him,  the 
opinion  of  Carlyle,  who  roundly  pronounced  it 
u  without  Backbone  or  basis  of  Common-sense,"  and 
"  among  the  absurdest  books  ever  written  by  a  gifted 
Man."  Tennyson,  however,  admitted  (to  Fitz- 
Gerald) that  he  u  found  greatness "  in  it,1  and  Mr. 
Swinburne  was  in  the  forefront  of  the  chorus  of 
praise.  The  audience  which  now  welcomed  Brown- 
ing was  in  fact  substantially  that  which  had  hailed 
the  first  fresh  runnels  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  genius  a 
few  years  before ;  the  fame  of  both  marked  a  wave 
of  reaction  from  the  austere  simplicity  and  attenuated 
sentiment  of  the  later  Idylls  of  the  King.  Readers 
upon  whom  the  shimmering  exquisiteness  of  Ar- 
thurian knighthood  began  to  pall  turned  with  relish  to 
Browning's  Italian  murder-story,  with  its  sensational 
crime,  its  mysterious  elopement,  its  problem  interest, 
its  engaging  actuality. 

And  undoubtedly  this  was  part  of  the  attraction  of 
the  theme  for  Browning  himself.  He  had  inherited 
his    father's   taste   for   stories   of   mysterious   crime.2 

1  More  Letters  of  E.  F.G. 

8  Cf.  H.  Corkran,  Celebrities  and  I  (R.  Browning,  senior),  1903. 


I72  BROWNING 

And  to  the  detective's  interest  in  probing  a  mystery, 
which  seems  to  have  been  uppermost  in  the  elder 
Browning,  was  added  the  pleader's  interest  in  making 
out  an  ingenious  and  plausible  case  for  each  party. 
The  casuist  in  him,  the  lover  of  argument  as  sucty 
and  the  devoted  student  of  Euripides,1  seized  with 
delight  upon  a  forensic  subject  which  made  it  natural 
to  introduce  the  various  "  persons  of  the  drama," 
giving  their  individual  testimonies  and  "  apologies." 
He  avails  himself  remorselessly  of  all  the  pretexts  for 
verbosity,  for  iteration,  for  sophistical  invention,  af- 
forded by  the  cumbrous  machinery  of  the  law,  and 
its  proverbial  delay.  Every  detail  is  examined  from 
every  point  of  view.  [Little  that  is  sordid  or  revolt- 
ing is  suppressed.  But  then  it  is  assuredly  a  mistake 
to  represent,  with  one  of  the  liveliest  of  Browning's 
recent  exponents,  that  the  story  was  for  him,  even  at 
the  outset,  in  the  stage  of  "  crude  fact,"  merely  a 
common  and  sordid  tale  like  a  hundred  others,  picked 
up  "  at  random  "  from  a  rubbish-heap  to  be  subjected 
to  the  alchemy  of  imagination  by  way  of  showing 
the  infinite  worth  of  "  the  insignificant."  Rather,  he 
thought  that  on  that  broiling  June  day,  a  providential 
"  Hand  "  had  "  pushed  "  him  to  the  discovery,  in  that 
unlikely  place,  of  a  forgotten  treasure,  which  he  forth- 
with pounced  upon  with  ravishment  as  a  "  prize." 
He  saw  in  it  from  the  first  something  rare,  something 

1  It  is  perhaps  not  without  significance  that  in  the  summer  sojourn 
when  The  Ring  and  the  Book  was  planned,  Euripides  was,  apart 
from  that,  his  absorbing  companion.  "  I  have  got  on,"  he  writes 
to  Miss  Blagden,  "  by  having  a  great  read  at  Euripides, — the  one 
book  I  brought  with  me." 


THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK  1 73 

exceptional,  and  made  wondering  inquiries  at  Rome, 
where  ecclesiasticism  itself  scarcely  credited  the  truth 
of  a  story  which  told  "  for  once  clean  for  the  Church 
and  dead  against  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil." ' 
The  metal  which  went  to  the  making  of  the  Ring^ 
and  on  which  he  poured  his  imaginative  alloy,  was 
crude  and  untempered,  but  it  was  gold.  Its  disinte- 
grated particles  gleamed  obscurely,  as  if  with  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  restorative  cunning  of  the  craftsman. 
Above  all,  of  course,  and  beyond  all  else,  that  arrest- 
ing gleam  lingered  about  the  bald  record  of  the  ro- 
malTce  of  Pompilia  and  Caponsacchi.  It  was  upon 
these  two  that  Browning's  divining  imagination 
fastened.  Their  relation  was  the  crucial  point  of  the 
whole  story,  the  point  at  which  report  stammered 
most  lamely,  and  where  the  interpreting  spirit  of 
poetry  was  most  needed  "to  abolish  the  death  of 
things,  deep  calling  unto  deep."  This  process  was 
itself,  however,  not  sudden  or  simple.  This  first  in- 
spiration was  superb,  visionary,  romantic, — in  keeping 
with  "  the  beauty  and  fearfulness  of  that  June  night " 
upon  the  terrace  at  Florence,  where  it  came  to  him. 

"  All  was  sure, 
Fire  laid  and  cauldron  set,  the  obscene  ring  traced, 
The  victim  stripped  and  prostrate  :  what  of  God  ? 
The  cleaving  of  a  cloud,  a  cry,  a  crash, 
Quenched  lay  their  cauldron,  cowered  i'  the  dust  the  crew, 
As,  in  a  glory  of  armour  like  Saint  George, 
Out  again  sprang  the  young  good  beauteous  priest 
Bearing  away  the  lady  in  his  arms 
Saved  for  a  splendid  minute  and  no  more."  l 

I  Ring  and  the  Book,  i.,  437.  *  lb.,  580-588. 


1 74  BROWNING 

Such  a  vision  might  have  been  rendered  without 
change  in  the  chiselled  gold  and  agate  of  the  Idylls  of 
the  King.  But  Browning's  hero  could  be  no  Sir 
Galahad  j  he  had^to  be  something  less ;  and  also 
something  more.  The  idealism  of  his  nature  had  to 
force  its  way  through  perplexities  and  errors!  beguiled 
by  the  distractions  and  baffled  by  the  duties  of  his 
chosen  career.  Born  to  be  a  lover,  in  Dante's  great 
way,  he  had  groped  through  life  without  tftfcpvision  of 
Beatrice,  seeking  to  satisfy  his  blind  desire,  a£  perhaps 
Dante  after  Beatrice's  death  did  also,  with  ihe  lower 
love  and  scorning  the  loveless  asceticism  of  Wie  monk. 
The  Church  encouraged  its  priest  to  be  'Ca  fribble 
and  a  coxcomb  " ;  and  a  fribble  and  a  coxcomb,  by 
his  own  confession,  Caponsacchi  became. V}But  the 
vanities  he  mingletl  with  never  quite  blincfed  him. 
He  walked  in  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides  bemt  on 
great  adventure,  plucked  in  ignorance  hedge- frui£  and 
feasted  to  satiety,  but  yet  he  scorned  the  acfce^e merit, 
laughing  at  such  high  fame  for  hips  ajf'ti  h^ws. l 
Then  suddenly  flashed  upon  him  the  ap^ritio^,  in 
the  theatre,  of  v 

"  A  lady,  young,  tall,  beautiful,  strange  and  sad." 

The  gaze  burnt  to  his  soul,  and  the  beautiful,  sad, 
strange  smile  haunted  him  night  and  day  ;  but  their 
first  effect  was  to  crush  and  scatter  all  thoughts  of 
love.  The  young  priest  found  himself  haunting  the 
femn  shades  of  the  Duomo  instead  of  serenading 

1  Caponsacchi,  1002  f. 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  1 75 

countesses  ;  vowed  to  write  no  more  canzonets,  and 
doubted  much  whether  Marini  were  a  better  poet  than 
Dante  after  all.  His  patron  jocularly  charged  him 
with  playing  truant  in  Church  all  day  long :  — 

" '  Are  you  turning  Molinist  ?  '     I  answered  quick : 
1  Sir,  what  if  I  turned  Christian  ?     It  might  be.'  " 

The  forged  love-letters  he  instantly  sees  through. 
They  are  the  scorpion-blotch  feigned  to  issue  miracu- 
lously from  Madonna's  mouth.  And  then  Pompilia 
makes  her  appeal.  "  Take  me  to  Rome !  "  The 
Madonna  has  turned  her  face  upon  him  indeed,  u  to 
summon  me  and  signify  her  choice,"  and  he  at  once 
receives  and  accepts 

"  my  own  fact,  my  miracle 
Self-authorised  and  self-explained," 

in  the  presence  of  which  all  hesitation  vanished, — 
nay,  thought  itself  fell  back  before  the  tide  of  reveal- 
ing emotion  :  — 

"  I  paced  the  city :  it  was  the  first  Spring. 
By  the  invasion  I  lay  passive  to, 
In  rushed  new  things,  the  old  were  rapt  away ; 
Alike  abolished — the  imprisonment 
Of  the  outside  air,  the  inside  weight  o'  the  world 
That  pulled  me  down." 

The  bonds  of  his  old  existence  snapped,  the  former 
heaven  and  earth  died  for  him,  and  that  death  was  the 
beginning  of  life  : 


I76  BROWNING 

"  Death  meant,  to  spurn  the  ground, 
Soar  to  the  sky, — die  well  and  you  do  that. 
The  very  immolation  made  the  bliss ; 
Death  was  the  heart  of  life,  and  all  the  harm 
My  folly  had  crouched  to  avoid,  now  proved  a  veil 
Hiding  all  gain  my  wisdom  strove  to  grasp  : 
As  if  the  intense  centre  of  the  flame 
Should  turn  a  heaven  to  that  devoted  fly 
Which  hitherto,  sophist  alike  and  sage, 
Saint  Thomas  with  his  sober  gray  goose-quill, 
And  sinner  Plato  by  Cephisian  reed, 
Would  fain,  pretending  just  the  insect's  good, 
Whisk  off,  drive  back,  consign  to  shade  again. 
Into  another  state,  under  new  rule 
I  knew  myself  was  passing  swift  and  sure  ; 
Whereof  the  initiatory  pang  approached, 
Felicitous  annoy,  as  bitter-sweet 
As  when  the  virgin-band,  the  victors  chaste, 
Feel  at  the  end  the  earthly  garments  drop, 
And  rise  with  something  of  a  rosy  shame 
Into  immortal  nakedness  :  so  I 
Lay,  and  let  come  the  proper  throe  would  thrill 
Into  the  ecstasy  and  outthrob  pain." 

But  he  presently  discovered  that  his  new  task  did  not 
contravene,  but  only  completed,  the  old  ideal.  The 
Church  had  offered  her  priest  no  alternative  between 
the  world  and  the  cloister, — self-indulgence  and  self- 
slaughter.  For  ignoble  passion  her  sole  remedy  was 
to  crush  passion  altogether.  She  calls  to  the  priest  to 
renounce  the  fleshly  woman  and  cleave  to  Her,  the 
Bride  who  took  his  plighted  troth  ;  but  it  is  a  scrannel 
voice  sighing  from  stone  lungs  :  — 

"  Leave  that  live  passion,  come,  be  dead  with  me  !  " 
From  the  exalted  Pisgah  of  his  "  new  state  "  he  recog- 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  1 77 

nised  that  the  true  self-sacrifice,  the  perfect  priest- 
hood, lay  by  way  of  Iif<L  not  death,  that  life  and  death 

"  Are  means  to  an  end,  that  passion  uses  both, 
Indisputably  mistress  of  the  man 
Whose  form  of  worship  is  self-sacrifice." 

Yet  it  is  not  this  recognition,  but  the  "  passion  " 
which  ultimately  determines  his  course.  Love  is,  for 
Browning,  in  his  maturity,  deeper  and  more  secure 
than  thought ;  Caponsacchi  wavers  in  his  thinking, 
falls  back  upon  the  narrower  conception  of  priest- 
hood, persuades  himself  that  his  duty  is  to  serve 
God:  — 

"  Duty  to  God  is  duty  to  her  :  I  think 
God,  who  created  her,  will  save  her  too 
Some  new  way,  by  one  miracle  the  more, 
Without  me." 

But  when  once  again  he  is  confronted  with  the  strange 
sad  face,  and  hears  once  more  the  pitiful  appeal,  all 
hesitations  vanish,  and  he  sees  no  duty 

"  Like  daring  try  be  good  and  true  myself, 
Leaving  the  shows  of  things  to  the  Lord  of  Show." 

With  the  security  of  perfect  innocence  he  flings  at 
his  judges  as  the  "  final  fact  " — 

"  In  contempt  for  all  misapprehending  ignorance 
Of  the  human  heart,  much  more  the  mind  of  Christ, — 
That  I  assuredly  did  bow,  was  blessed 
By  the  revelation  of  Pompilia." 

Thus,  through  all  the  psychologic  subtlety  of  the  por- 


I78  BROWNING 

trait  the  groundwork  of  spiritual  romance  subsists. 
The  militant  saint  of  legend  reappears,  in  the  mould 
and  garb  of  the  modern  world,  subject  to  all  its  hamper- 
ing conditions,  and  compelled  to  make  his  way  over 
the  corpses,  not  of  lions  and  dragons  only,  but  of  con- 
secrated duties  and  treasured  instincts.  And  the  mat- 
ter-of-course chivalry  of  professed  knighthood  is  as  in- 
ferior in  art  as  in  ethics  to  the  chivalry  to  which  this 
priest,  vowed  to  another  service,  is  lifted  by  the  vision 
of  Pompilia. 

\  Pompilia  is  herself,  like  her  soldier  saint,  vowed  to 
another  service.  But  while  he  only  after  a  struggle 
overcomes,  the  apparent  discrepancy  between  his  duty 
as  a  priest  and  as  a  knight,  she  rises  with  the  ease  and 
swiftness  of  a  perfectly  pure  and  spiritual  nature  from 
the  duty  of  endurance  to  the  duty  of  resistance  — 

"  Promoted  at  one  cry 
O'  the  trump  of  God  to  the  new  service,  not 
To  longer  bear,  but  henceforth  fight,  be  found 
Sublime  in  new  impatience  with  the  foe !  "  * 

And  she  carries  the  same  fearless  simplicity  into  her 
love-  Caponsacchi  falters  and  recoils  in  his  adorations 
of  her,  with  the  compunction  of  the  voluptuary  turned 
ascetic ;  he  hardly  dares  to  call  his  passion  by  a  name 
which  the  vulgar  will  mumble  and  misinterpret :  she, 
utterly  unconscious  of  such  peril,  glories  in  the  im- 
measurable devotion 

"  Of  my  one  friend,  my  only,  all  my  own, 
Who  put  his  breast  between  the  spears  and  me." 

1  The  Popet  1057. 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  1 79 

Pompilia  is  steeped  in  the  remembrance  of  the  poet's 
u  Lyric  Love."  Remote  enough  this  illiterate  child 
must  seem  from  the  brilliant  and  accomplished  Eliza- 
beth Browning.  But  Browning's  conception  of  his 
wife's  nature  had  a  significant  affinity  to  his  portrayal 
of  Pompilia.  She,  he  declared,  was  u  the  poet,"  taught 
by  genius  more  than  by  experience  ;  he  himself  u  the 
clever  person,"  effectively  manipulating  a  compre- 
hensive knowledge  of  life.  Pompilia  does  indeed  put 
her  narrow  experience  to  marvellous  use  j  her  blend- 
ing of  the  infantine  with  the  profound  touches  the 
bounds  of  possible  consistency  ;  but  her  naive  spiritual 
instinct  is  ever  on  the  alert,  and  fills  her  with  a  per- 
petual sense  of  the  strangeness  of  the  things  that  hap- 
pen, a  "  childlike,  wondering  yet  subtle  perception  of 
the  anomalies  of  life." 

Spiritual  simplicity  has  received  no  loftier  tribute 
than  from  the  most  opulent  and  complex  poetic  intel- 
lect of  our  day.  He  loves  to  bring  such  natures  into 
contrast  with  the  cunning  and  cleverness  of  the  world  ; 
to  show  an  Aprile,  a  David,  a  Pippa  loosening  the 
tangle  of  more  complicated  lives  with  a  song.  Pom- 
pilia is  a  sister  of  the  same  spiritual  household  as  these. 
But  she  is  a  far  more  wonderful  creation  than  any  of 
them  ;  the  same  exquisite  rarity  of  soul,  but  unfolded 
under  conditions  more  sternly  real,  and  winning  no 
such  miraculous  alacrity  of  response.  In  lyrical  wealth 
and  swiftness  Browning  had  perhaps  advanced  little 
since  the  days  of  Pippa  ;  but  how  much  he  had  grown 
in  Shakespearian  realism  is  fairly  measured  by  the  con- 
trast between  that  early,  half-legendary  lyric  child,  by 


l80  BROWNING 

whose  unconscious  alchemy  the  hard  hearts  of  Asolo 
are  suddenly  turned,  and  this  later  creation,  whose 
power  over  her  world,  though  not  less  real,  is  so  much 
more  slowly  and  hardly  achieved.  Her  "  song "  is 
only  the  ravishing  "  unheard  melody  "  which  breathes 
like  incense  from  her  inarticulate  childhood.  By  sim- 
ple force  of  being  what  she  is,  she  turns  the  priest 
into  the  saint,  compels  a  cynical  society  to  believe  in 
spiritual  love,  and  wins  even  from  the  husband  who 
bought  her  and  hated  her  and  slew  her  the  confession 
of  his  last  desperate  cry  — 

"  Pompilia,  will  you  let  them  murder  me  ?  " 

In  contrast  with  these  two,  who  shape  their  course 
by  the  light  of  their  own  souls,  the  authorised  expo- 
nents of  morality  play  a  secondary  and  for  the  most 
part  a  sorry  part.  The  old  Pope  mournfully  reflects 
that  his  seven  years'  tillage  of  the  garden  of  the  Church 
has  issued  only  in  the  "timid  leaf  and  the  uncertain 
bud,"  while  the  perfect  flower,  Pompilia,  has  sprung 
up  by  the  wayside  'neath  the  foot  of  the  enemy,  "  a 
mere  chance-sown  seed." 

"Where  are  the  Christians  in  their  panoply? 
The  loins  we  girt  about  with  truth,  the  breasts 
Righteousness  plated  round,  the  shield  of  faith  ?     .     .     . 
Slunk  into  corners  !  " 

The  Aretine  Archbishop,  who  thrust  the  suppliant 
Pompilia  back  upon  the  wolf,  the  Convent  of  Con- 
vertities,  who  took  her  in  as  a  suffering  saint,  and  after 
her  death  claimed  her  succession  because  she  was  of 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  l8l 

dishonest  life,  the  unspeakable  Abate  and  Canon, 
Guido's  brothers, — it  is  these  figures  who  have  played 
the  most  sinister  part,  and  the  old  Pope  contemplates 
them  with  the  "  terror  "  of  one  who  sees  his  funda- 
mental assumptions  shaken  at  the  root.  For  here  the 
theory  of  the  Church  was  hard  to  maintain.  Not  only 
had  the  Church,  whose  mission  it  was  to  guide  corrupt 
human  nature  by  its  divine  light,  only  darkened  and 
destroyed,  but  the  saving  love  and  faith  had  sprung 
forth  at  the  bidding  of  natural  promptings  of  the  spirit, 
which  its  rule  and  law  were  to  supersede.1  The  blaze 
of  "  uncommissioned  meteors  "  had  intervened  where 
the  authorised  luminaries  failed,  and  if  they  dazzled,  it 
was  with  excess  of  light.     Was  Caponsacchi  blind  ? 

"  Ay,  as  a  man  should  be  inside  the  sun, 
Delirious  with  the  plentitude  of  light."  2 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  how  so  grave  an  indictment 
would  have  been  forced  home  by  the  author  of  the 
Cenci  had  this  other,  less  famous,  "  Roman  murder- 
case  "  fallen  into  his  hands.  The  old  Godwinian 
virus  would  have  found  ready  material  in  this  disas- 
trous break-down  of  a  great  institution,  this  magnificent 
uprising  of  emancipated  souls.  Yet,  though  the 
Shelleyan  affinities  of  Browning  are  here  visible 
enough,  his  point  of  view  is  clearly  distinct.  The 
revolutionary  animus  against  institutions  as  the  sole 
obstacle  to  the  native  goodness  of  man  has  wholly 
vanished ;  but  of  historic  or  mystic  reverence  for 
them  he   has  not  a  trace.     He  parts  company  with 

i  The  Pope,  I J50  f.  «  lb.,  1563. 


1 82  BROWNING  * 

Rousseau  without  showing  the  smallest  affinity  to 
Burke.  As  sources  of  moral  and  spiritual  growth  the 
State  and  the  Church  do  not  count.  Training  and 
discipline  have  their  relative  worth,  but  the  spirit 
bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  the  heights  of  moral 
achievement  are  won  by  those  alone  in  whom  it 
breathes  the  heroism  of  aspiration  and  resolve.  His 
idealists  grow  for  the  most  part  in  the  interstices  of 
the  social  organism.  He  recognises  them,  it  is  true, 
without  difficulty  even  in  the  most  central  and  re- 
sponsible organs  of  government.  None  of  his  un- 
official heroes — Paracelsus  or  Sordello  or  Rabbi  ben 
Ezra — has  a  deeper  moral  insight  than  the  aged  Pope. 
But  the  Pope's  impressiveness  for  Browning  and  for 
his  readers  lies  just  in  his  complete  emancipation 
from  the  bias  of  his  office.  He  faces  the  task  of 
judgment,  not  as  an  infallible  priest,  but  as  a  man, 
whose  wisdom,  like  other  men's,  depends  upon  the 
measure  of  his  God-given  judgment,  and  flags  with 
years.  His  "  grey  ultimate  decrepitude "  is  fallible, 
Pope  though  he  be ;  and  he  naively  submits  the  ver- 
dict it  has  framed  to  the  judgment  of  his  former  self, 
the  vigorous,  but  yet  uncrowned,  worker  in  the  world. 
This  summing-up  of  the  case  is  in  effect  the  poet's 
own,  and  is  rich  in  the  familiar  prepossessions  of 
Browning's  individualist  and  unecclesiastical  mind. 
He  vindicates  Caponsacchi  more  in  the  spirit  of  an 
antique  Roman  than  of  a  Christian  ;  he  has  open  ears 
for  the  wisdom  of  the  pagan  world,  and  toleration  for 
the  human  Euripides  ;  scorn  for  the  founder  of  Jesuit- 
ism, sympathy   for  the  heretical   Molinists  ;    and  he 


THE    RING    AND    THE    BOOK  183 

blesses  the  imperfect  knowledge  which  makes  faith 
hard.  The  Pope,  like  his  creator,  is  "  ever  a  fighter," 
and  his  last  word  is  a  peremptory  rejection  of  all  ap- 
peals for  mercy,  whether  in  the  name  of  policy, 
Christian  forgiveness,  or  "  soft  culture,"  and  a  re- 
solve to 

"  Smite  with  my  whole  strength  once  more,  ere  end  my  part, 
Ending,  so  far  as  man  may,  this  offence." 

And  with  this  solemn  and  final  summing-up — this 
quietly  authoritative  key-note  into  which  all  the  clash- 
ing discords  seem  at  length  to  be  resolved — the  poem, 
in  most  hands,  would  have  closed.  But  Browning 
was  too  ingrained  a  believer  in  the  u  oblique  "  meth- 
ods of  Art  to  acquiesce  in  so  simple  and  direct  a  con- 
clusion ;  he  loved  to  let  truth  struggfeTh rough  devious 
aTTcTunlikely  channels  to  the  heart  instead  of  missing 
i**^a1m  "by  being  formally  proclaimed  or  announced. 
Hence  we  are  hurried  from  the  austere  solitary  medi- 
tation of  the  aged  Pope  to  the  condemned  cell  of 
Guido,  and  have  opened  before  us  with  amazing  swift- 
ness and  intensity  all  the  recesses  of  that  monstrous 
nature,  its  "  lips  unlocked  "  by  "  lucidity  of  soul." 
It  ends,  not  on  a  solemn  keynote,  but  in  that  passion- 
ate and  horror-stricken  cry  where  yet  lurks  the  implicit 
confession  that  he  is  guilty  and  his  doom  just  — 

"  Pompilia,  will  you  let  them  murder  me  ?  " 

It  is  easy — though  hardly  any  longer  quite  safe — to 
cavil  at  the  unique  structure  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
But  this  unique  structure,  which  probably  never  de- 

/   VOf THE  X 

I   UNIVERSITY  1 


1 84  BROWNING 

terred  a  reader  who  had  once  got  under  way,  answers 
in  the  most  exact  and  expressive  way  to  Browning's 
aims.  The  subject  is  not  the  story  of  Pompilia  only, 
but  the  fortunes  of  her  story,  and  of  all  stories  of 
spiritual  naivete  such  as  hers,  when  projected  upon 
the  variously  refracting  media  of  mundane  judgment 
and  sympathies.  It  is  not  her  guilt  or  innocence  only 
which  is  on  trial,  but  the  mind  of  man  in  its  capacity 
to  receive  and  apprehend  the  surprises  of  the  spirit. 
The  issue,  triumphant  for  her,  is  dubious  and  qualified 
for  the  mind  of  man,  where  the  truth  only  at  last 
flames  forth  in  its  purity.  Browning  even  hints  at 
the  close  that  "  onejesson  "  to  be  had  from  his  work 
is  the  falseness  of  human  estimation,  fame,  and 
speech.  But  for  the  poet  who  thus  summed  up  the 
purport  of  his  twenty  thousand  verses,  this  was  not 
the  whole  truth  of  the  matter.  Here,  as  always,  that 
immense,  even  riotous,  vitality  of  his  made  the  haz- 
ards and  vicissitudes  of  the  process  even  more  precious 
than  the  secure  triumph  of  the  issue,  and  the  spirit  of 
poetry  itself  lured  him  along  the  devious  ways  of 
minds  in  which  personality  set  its  own  picturesque  or 
lurid  tinge  upon  truth.  The  execution  vindicated  the 
design.  Voluble,  even  "  mercilessly  voluble,"  the 
poet  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  undoubtedly  is.  But 
it  is  the  volubility  of  a  consummate  master  of  expres- 
sion, in  whose  hands  the  difficult  medium  of  blank 
verse  becomes  an  instrument  of  Shakespearian  flexi- 
bility and  compass,  easily  answering  to  all  the  shifts 
and  windings  of  a  prodigal  invention,  familiar  without 
being  vulgar,  gritty  with  homely  detail  without  being 


THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK  1 85 

flat ;  always,  at  its  lowest  levels,  touched,  like  a  plain 
just  before  sunrise,  with  hints  of  ethereal  light,  mo- 
mentarily withheld  ;  and  rising  from  time  to  time 
without  effort  to  a  magnificence  of  phrase  and  move- 
ment touched  in  its  turn  with  that  suggestion  of  the 
homely  and  the  familiar  which  in  the  inmost  recesses 
of  Browning's  genius  lurked  so  near — so  vitally  near 
— to  the  roots  of  the  sublime. 


CHAPTER  VII 

AFTERMATH 

Which  wins — Earth's  poet  or  the  Heavenly  Muse  ? 

— Aristophanes'  Apology. 

The  publication  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  marks  in 
several  ways  a  turning-point  in  Browning's  career. 
Conceived  and  planned  before  the  tragic  close  of  his 
married  life,  and  written  during  the  first  desolate  years 
of  bereavement,  it  is,  more  than  any  other  of  his 
greater  poems,  pervaded  by  his  wife's  spirit,  a  crown- 
ing monument  to  his  Lyric  Love.  But  it  is  also  the 
last  upon  which  her  spirit  left  any  notable  trace. 
With  his  usual  extraordinary  recuperative  power, 
Browning  re-moulded  the  mental  universe  which  her 
love  had  seemed  to  complete,  and  her  death  mo- 
mentarily to  shatter,  into  a  new,  lesser  completeness. 
He  lived  in  the  world,  and  frankly  "  liked  earth's 
way,"  enjoying  the  new  gifts  of  friendship  and  of 
fame  which  the  years  brought  in  rich  measure.  The 
little  knot  of  critics  whose  praise  even  of  Men  and 
Women  and  Dramatis  Persona  had  been  little  more 
than  a  cry  in  the  wilderness,  found  their  voices  lost 
in  the  chorus  of  admiration  which  welcomed  the 
story  of  Pompilia.  Some  stout  recalcitrants,  it  is 
true,  like  Edward  FitzGerald,  held  their  ground. 
And  while  the  tone  of  even  hostile  criticism  be- 
186 


AFTERMATH  187 

came  respectful,  enough  of  it  remained  to  provide 
objects,  seven  years  later,  for  the  uproarious  chaff  of 
Paccbiarotto. 

From  1869  to  1871  Browning  published  nothing, 
and  he  appears  also  to  have  written  nothing  beyond  a 
sonnet  commemorating  Helen,  the  mother  of  Lord 
Dufferin  (dated  April  26,  1870),  almost  the  only  set 
of  fourteen  lines  in  his  works  of  which  not  one  pro- 
claims his  authorship.  But  the  decade  which  fol- 
lowed was  more  prolific  than  any  other  ten  years  of 
his  life.  Between  187 1  and  1878  nine  volumes  in 
swift  succession  allured,  provoked,  or  bewildered  the 
reading  world.  Everything  was  now  planned  on  a 
larger  scale ;  the  vast  compass  and  boundless 
volubility  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  became  normal. 
He  gave  free  rein  to  his  delight  in  intricate  involu- 
tions of  plot  and  of  argument;  the  dramatic  mono- 
logue grew  into  novels  in  verse  like  Red-cotton 
Night-cap  Country  and  The  Inn  Album;  and  the 
"  special  pleaders,"  Hohenstiel  and  Juan,  expounded 
their  cases  with  a  complexity  of  apparatus  un ap- 
proached even  by  Sludge.  A  certain  relaxation  of 
poetic  nerve  is  on  the  whole  everywhere  apparent, 
notwithstanding  the  prodigal  display  of  crude  intel- 
lectual power.  His  poetic  alchemy  is  less  potent,  the 
ore  of  sordid  fact  remains  sordid  still.  Not  that  his 
high  spirituality  is  insecure,  his  heroic  idealism 
dimmed;  but  they  coalesce  less  intimately  with  the 
alert  wit  and  busy  intelligence  of  the  mere  u  clever 
man$"  and  seek  their  nutriment  and  material  more 
readily  in  regions  of  legend  and  romance,  where  the 


1 88  BROWNING 

transmuting  work  of  imagination  has  been  already 
done.  It  is  no  accident  that  his  lifelong  delight  in 
the  ideal  figures  of  Greek  tragedy,  so  unlike  his  own 
creations,  became  in  these  years  for  the  first  time  an 
effective  source  of  poetry.  The  poems  of  this  decade 
form  thus  an  odd  motley  series — realism  and  romance 
interlaced  but  hardly  blent,  iEschylus  and  Euripides, 
the  divine  helper  Herakles  and  the  glorious  embodi- 
ment of  the  soul  of  Athens,  Balaustion,  emerging  and 
re-emerging  after  intervals  occupied  by  the  chicaneries 
of  Miranda  or  the  Elder  Man.  No  inept  legend  for 
the  Browning  of  this  decade  is  the  noble  song  of 
Thamuris  which  his  Aristophanes  half  mockingly 
declaimed.  "Earth's  poet"  and  "the  heavenly  Muse" 
are  not  allies,  and  they  at  times  go  different  ways. 

Herve  Riel  (published  March,  1871)  is  less  char- 
acteristic of  Browning  in  purely  literary  quality  than 
in  the  hearty  helpfulness  which  it  celebrates,  and  the 
fine  international  chivalry  by  which  it  was  inspired. 
The  French  disasters  moved  him  deeply ;  he  had 
many  personal  ties  with  France,  and  was  sharing  with 
his  dearest  French  friend,  Joseph  Milsand,  as  near 
neighbour,  a  primitive  villeggiatura  t  in  a  Norman 
fishing-village  when  the  stupendous  catastrophe  of 
Sedan  broke  upon  them.  Sympathy  with  the1  French 
sufferers  induced  Browning  to  do  violence  to  a 
cherished  principle  by  offering  the  poem  to  George 
Smith  for  publication  in  The  CornhilL  Most  of  its 
French  readers  doubtless  heard  of  Herve  Riel,  as 
well  as  of  Robert  Browning,  for  the  first  time.  ♦His 
English   readers   found  it  hard  to  classify  among  the 


AFTERMATH  1 89 

naval  ballads  of  their  country,  few  of  which  had  been 
devoted  to  celebrating  the  exploits  of  foreign  sailors, 
or  the  deliverance  of  hostile  fleets.  But  they  recog- 
nised the  poet  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  Herve  has 
no  touch  of  Browning's  u  philosophy."  He  is  none 
the  less  a  true  kinsman,  in  his  homely  fashion,  of 
Caponsacchi, — summoned  in  a  supreme  emergency 
for  which  the  appointed  authorities  have  proved 
unequal. 

A  greater  tale  of  heroic  helpfulness  was  presently 
to  engage  him.  Balaustion's  Adventure  was,  as  the 
charming  dedication  tells  us,  the  most  delightful  of 
May-month  amusements ;  but  in  the  splendid  proem 
which  enshrines  the  story  of  Herakles  and  Alkestis, 
we  still  feel  the  thrill  of  the  deadly  conflict ;  the  agony 
of  France  may  be  partly  divined  in  the  agony  of 
Athens.  Thirty  years  before,  he  had  shown,  in  the 
noble  fragmentary  M  prologue  "  to  a  Hippolytus  (Arte- 
mis Prologizes),  a  command  of  the  majestic,  reticent 
manner  of  Greek  tragedy  sufficiently  remarkable  in 
one  whose  natural  instincts  of  expression  were  far 
more  Elizabethan  than  Greek.  The  incongruity  of 
Greek  dramatic  methods  with  his  own  seems  to  have 
speedily  checked  his  progress ;  but  Euripides,  the 
author  of  the  Greek  Hippolytus,  retained  a  peculiar 
fascination  for  him,  and  it  was  on  another  Euripidean 
drama  that  he  now,  in  the  fulness  of  his  powers,  set 
his  hand.  The  result  certainly  does  not  diminish  our 
sense  of  the  incongruity.  Keenly  as  he  admired  the 
humanity  and  pathos  of  Euripides,  he  challenges  com- 
parison  with   Euripides   most    successfully   when    he 


I9O  BROWNING 

goes  completely  his  own  way.  He  was  too  robustly 
original  to  u  transcribe  "  well,  and  his  bold  emphatic 
speech,  curbed  to  the  task  of  reproducing  the  choice 
and  pregnant  sobriety  of  Attic  style,  is  apt  to  eliminate 
everything  but  the  sobriety.  The  "  transcribed " 
Greek  is  often  yet  flatter  than  "  literal "  versions  of 
Greek  verse  are  wont  to  be,  and  when  Browning 
speaks  in  his  own  person  the  style  recovers  itself  with 
a  sudden  and  vehement  bound,  like  a  noble  wild 
creature  abruptly  released  from  restraint.  Among  the 
finest  of  these  "  recoveries  "  are  the  bursts  of  descrip- 
tion which  Balaustion's  enthusiasm  interjects  between 
the  passages  of  dialogue.  Such  is  the  magnificent 
picture  of  the  coming  of  Herakles.  In  the  original 
he  merely  enters  as  the  chorus  end  their  song,  ad- 
dressing them  with  the  simple  inquiry,*"  Friends,  is 
Admetos  haply  within  ?  "  to  which  the  chorus  reply, 
like  civil  retainers,  "Yes,  Herakles,  he  is  at  home." 
Browning,  or  his  Balaustion,  cannot  permit  the  mighty 
undoer  of  the  tragic  harms  to  come  on  in  this  homely 
fashion.  A  great  interrupting  voice  rings  suddenly 
through  the  dispirited  maunderings  of  Admetos'  house- 
folk  ;  and  the  hearty  greeting,  "  My  hosts  here !  * 
thrills  them  with  the  sense  that  something  good  and 
opportune  is  at  hand : 

"  Sudden  into  the  midst  of  sorrow  leapt, 
Along  with  the  gay  cheer  of  that  great  voice 
Hope,  joy,  salvation  :  Herakles  was  here  ! 
Himself  o'  the  threshold,  sent  his  voice  on  first 
To  herald  all  that  human  and  divine 
I'  the  weary,  happy  face  of  him, — half  god, 
Half  man,  which  made  the  god-part  god  the  more." 


AFTERMATH  I9I 

The  heroic  helpfulness  of  Herakles  is  no  doubt  the 
chief  thing  for  Browning  in  the  story.  The  large 
gladness  of  spirit  with  which  he  confronts  the  metic- 
ulous and  perfunctory  mourning  of  the  stricken 
household  reflected  his  own  habitual  temper  with 
peculiar  vividness.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  Euripidean 
story  contained  an  element  which  Browning  could  not 
assimilate — Admetos'  acceptance  of  Alkestis'  sacrifice. 
To  the  Greek  the  action  seemed  quite  in  order;  the 
persons  who  really  incurred  his  reproof  were  Ad- 
metos' parents,  who  in  spite  of  their  advanced  years 
refused  to  anticipate  their  approaching  death  in  their 
son's  favour.  Browning  cannot  away  with  an  Ad- 
metos  who,  from  sheer  reluctance  to  die,  allowed  his 
wife  to  suffer  death  in  his  place ;  and  he  characteris- 
tically suggests  a  version  of  the  story  in  which  its 
issues  are  determined  from  first  to  last,  and  on  both 
sides,  by  self-sacrificing  love.  Admetos  is  now  the 
large-minded  king  who  grieves  to  be  called  away  be- 
fore his  work  for  his  people  is  done.  Alkestis  seeks, 
with  Apollo's  leave,  to  take  his  place,  so  that  her  lord 
may  live  and  carry  out  the  purposes  of  his  soul, — 

"  Nor  let  Zeus  lose  the  monarch  meant  in  thee." 

But  Admetos  will  not  allow  this ;  for  Alkestis  is  as 
spirit  to  his  flesh,  and  his  life  without  her  would  be 
but  a  passive  death.  To  which  "  pile  of  truth  on 
truth  "  she  rejoins  by  adding  the  "  one  truth  more," 
that  his  refusal  of  her  sacrifice  would  be  in  effect  a 
surrender  of  the  supreme  duty  laid  upon  him  of  reign- 
ing a  righteous  king, — that  this  life-purpose  of  his  is 


192 


BROWNING 


above  joy  and  sorrow,  and  the  death  which  she  will 
undergo  for  his  and  its  sake,  her  highest  good  as  it  is 
his.  And  in  effect,  her  death,  instead  of  paralysing  him, 
redoubles  the  vigour  of  his  soul,  so  that  Alkestis,  liv- 
ing on  in  a  mind  made  better  by  her  presence,  has  not 
in  the  old  tragic  sense  died  at  all,  and  finds  her  claim 
to  enter  Hades  rudely  rejected  by  u  the  pensive  queen 
o'  the  twilight,"  for  whom  death  meant  just  to  die, 
and  wanders  back  accordingly  to  live  once  more  by 
Admetos'  side.  Such  the  story  became  when  the 
Greek  dread  of  death  was  replaced  by  Browning's 
spiritual  conception  of  a  death  glorified  by  love.  1  The 
pathos  and  tragic  forces  of  it  were  inevitably  enfee- 
bled ;  no  Herakles  was  needed  to  pluck  this  Alkestis 
from  the  death  she  sought,  and  the  rejection  of  her 
claim  to  die  is  perilously  near  to  Lucianic  burlesque. 
But,  simply  as  poetry,  the  joyous  sun-like  radiance  of 
the  mighty  spoiler  of  death  is  not  unworthily  replaced 
by  the  twilight  queen,  whose  eyes 

"  lingered  still 
Straying  among  the  flowers  of  Sicily," 

absorbed  in  the  far  memory  of  the  life  that  Herakles 
asserted  and  enforced, — until,  at  Alkestis*  summons, 
she 

"  broke  through  humanity 
Into  the  orbed  omniscience  of  a  god." 

From  his  idealised  Admetos  Browning  passed  with 
hardly  a  pause  to  attempt  the  more  difficult  feat  of 
idealising  a  living  sovereign.  Admetos  was  ennobled 
by  presenting  him  as  a  political  idealist ;  the  Frej^h 


AFTERMATH  1 93 

Emperor,  whose  career  had  closed  at  Sedan,  was  in 
some  degree  qualified  for  a  parallel  operation  by  the 
obscurity  which  still  invested  the  inmost  nature  of 
that  well-meaning  adventurer.  Browning  had  watched 
Louis  Napoleon's  career  with  mixed  feelings  ;  he  had 
resented  the  coup  d'etat,  and  still  more  the  annexation 
of  Savoy  and  Nice  after  the  war  of  1859.  But  ne 
had  never  shared  the  bitter  animus  which  prevailed  at 
home.  He  was  equally  far,  no  doubt,  from  sharing 
the  exalted  hero-worship  which  inspired  his  wife's 
Poems  before  Congress.  The  creator  of  The  Italian  in 
England,  of  Luigi,  and  Bluphocks,  could  not  but 
recognise  the  signal  services  of  Napoleon  to  the  cause 
of  Italian  freedom,  however  sharply  he  condemned 
the  hard  terms  on  which  Italy  had  been  compelled  to 
purchase  it.  "  It  was  a  great  action ;  but  he  has 
taken  eighteenpence  for  it — which  is  a  pity  "  J1  it  was 
on  the  lines  of  this  epigram,  already  quoted,  that 
eleven  years  later  he  still  interpreted  the  fallen  em- 
peror, and  that  he  now  completed,  as  it  would  seem, 
the  abandoned  poem  of  i860.  He  saw  in  him  a  man 
of  generous  impulses  doubled  with  a  borne  politician, 
a  ruler  of  genuine  Liberal  and  even  democratic  pro- 
clivities, which  the  timid  calculations  of  a  second-rate 
opportunist  reduced  to  a  contemptible  travesty  of 
Liberalism.  The  shifting  standpoints  of  such  a  man 
are  reproduced  with  superfluous  fidelity  in  his  sup- 
posed Defence,  which  seems  designed  to  be  as  elusive 
and  impalpable  as  the  character  it  reflects.  How  un- 
like the  brilliant  and  precise  realism  of  Blougram,  six- 
1  Letters  of  E.  B.  B.,  ii.  385. 


194  BROWNING 

teen  years  before  !  The  upcurling  cloud-rings  from 
HohenstiePs  cigar  seem  to  symbolise  something  un- 
substantial* and  evasive  in  the  whole  fabric.  The 
assumptions  we  are  invited  to  form  give  way  one  after 
another.  Leicester  Square  proves  the  u  Residenz," 
the  "  bud-mouthed  arbitress  "  a  shadowy  memory,  the 
discourse  to  a  friendly  and  flattered  hearer  a  midnight 
meditation.  And  there  is  a  like  fluctuation  of  mood. 
Now  he  is  formally  justifying  his  past,  now  musing, 
half  wistfully,  half  ironically,  over  all  that  he  might 
have  been  and  was  not.  At  the  outset  we  see  him 
complacently  enough  intrenched  within  a  strong  posi- 
tion, that  of  the  consistent  opportunist,  who  made  the 
best  of  what  he  found,  not  a  creator  but  a  conserva- 
tor, "  one  who  keeps  the  world  safe."  But  he  has 
ardent  ideas  and  aspirations.  The  freedom  of  Italy 
has  kindled  his  imagination,  and  in  the  grandest  pas- 
sage of  the  poem  he  broods  over  his  frustrate  but 
deathless  dream :  — 

"  Ay,  still  my  fragments  wander,  music-fraught, 
Sighs  of  the  soul,  mine  once,  mine  now,  and  mine 
For  ever  !     Crumbled  arch,  crushed  aqueduct, 
Alive  with  tremors  in  the  shaggy  growth 
Of  wild- wood,  crevice-sown,  that  triumphs  there, 
Imparting  exultation  to  the  hills." 

But  if  he  had  abandoned  these  generous  dreams,  he 
had  won  free  trade  and  given  the  multitude  cheap 
bread,  and  in  a  highly  ingenious  piece  of  sophistry  he 
explains,  by  the  aid  of  the  gospel  of  Evolution,  how 
men  are  united  by  their  common  hunger,  and  thrust 
apart    by    their    conflicting    ideas.     But    Hohenstiel 


AFTERMATH  I95 

knows  very  well  that  his  intrenchments  are  not  un- 
assailable ;  and  he  goes  on  to  compose  an  imaginary 
biography  of  himself  as  he  might  have  been,  with 
comments  which  reflect  his  actual  course.  The  finest 
part  of  this  aethereal  voyage  is  that  in  which  his  higher 
unfulfilled  self  pours  scorn  upon  the  paltry  duplicities 
of  the  "  Peace  "  policy  by  which  his  actual  and  lower 
self  had  kept  on  good  terms  abroad,  and  beguiled  the 
imperious  thirst  for  "  la  gloire  "  at  home.  Indig- 
nantly the  author  of  Herve  Riel  asks  why  "  the  more 
than  all  magnetic  race  "  should  have  to  court  its  rivals 
by  buying  their  goods  untaxed,  or  guard  against  them 
by  war  for  war's  sake,  when  Mother  Earth  has  no 
pride  above  her  pride  in  that  same 

"  race  all  flame  and  air 
And  aspiration  to  the  boundless  Great, 
The  incommensurably  Beautiful  — 
Whose  very  falterings  groundward  come  of  flight 
Urged  by  a  pinion  all  too  passionate 
For  heaven  and  what  it  holds  of  gloom  and  glow." 

The  Ring  and  the  Book  had  made  Browning  famous. 
But  fame  was  far  from  tempting  him  to  undue  com- 
pliance with  the  tastes  of  his  new-won  public ;  rather 
it  prompted  him  to  indulge  his  genius  more  freely, 
and  to  go  his  own  way  with  a  more  complete  security 
and  unconcern.  Hohenstiel-Schwangau — one  of  the 
rockiest  and  least  attractive  of  all  Browning's  poems 
— had  mystified  most  of  its  readers  and  been  little 
relished  by  the  rest.  And  now  that  plea  for  a  dis- 
credited politician  was  followed  up  by  what,  on  the 
face  of  it,  was,  as  Mrs.  Orr  puts  it,  "  a  defence  of 


I96  BROWNING 

inconstancy  in  marriage."  The  apologist  for  Na- 
poleon III  came  forward  as  the  advocate  of  Don 
Juan.  The  prefixed  bit  of  dialogue  from  Moliere's 
play  explains  the  situation.  Juan,  detected  by  his 
wife  in  an  intrigue,  is  completely  non-plussed. 
"  Fie ! "  cries  Elvire,  mockingly  (in  Browning's 
happy  paraphrase), — 

"  Fie  !  for  a  man  of  mode,  accustomed  at  the  court 
To  such  a  style  of  thing,  how  awkwardly  my  lord 
Attempts  defence !  " 

In  this  emergency,  Browning,  as  it  would  seem,  steps 
in,  and  provides  the  arch-voluptuary  with  a  philosophy 
of  illicit  love,  quite  beyond  the  speculative  capacity 
of  any  Juan  in  literature,  and  glowing  with  poetry  of 
a  splendour  and  fertility  which  neither  Browning  him- 
self nor  the  great  English  poet  who  had  identified  his 
name  with  that  of  Juan,  and  whom  Browning  in  this 
very  poem  overwhelms  with  genial  banter,  ever  sur- 
passed. The  poem  inevitably  challenged  comparison 
with  Byron's  masterpiece.  In  dazzling  play  of  intel- 
lect, in  swift  interchange  of  wit  and  passion,  the 
English  nineteenth  century  produced  nothing  more 
comparable  to  the  Don  'Juan  of  Byron  than  Fifine  at 
the  Fair. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  critics  had  some  ex- 
cuse who,  like  Mortimer,  frankly  identified  Browning 
with  his  hero,  and  described  the  poem  as  an  assertion 
of  the  u  claim  to  relieve  the  fixity  of  conjugal  affection 
by  varied  adventure  in  the  world  of  temporary  loves." 1 

1  Mrs.  Orr,  Life,  p.  297.  Her  own  criticism  is,  however,  curi- 
ously indecisive  and  embarrassed. 


AFTERMATH  I97 

For  Browning  has  not  merely  given  no  direct  hint  of 
his  own  divergence  from  Juan,  corresponding  to  his 
significant  comment  upon  Blougram — "  he  said  true 
things  but  called  them  by  false  names  " ;  he  has  made 
his  own  subtlest  and  profoundest  convictions  on  life 
and  art  spring  spontaneously  from  the  brain  of  this 
brilliant  conqueror  of  women.  Like  Goethe's  Faust, 
he  unmistakably  shares  the  mind,  the  wisdom,  the 
faith,  of  his  creator;  it  is  plausible  to  suppose  that 
the  poet  indorses  his  application  of  them.  This  is 
unquestionably  a  complete  mistake  ;  but  Browning, 
as  usual,  presumed  too  much  upon  his  readers'  insight, 
and  took  no  pains  to  obviate  a  confusion  which  he 
clearly  supposed  to  be  impossible. 

It  was  on  the  strand  at  Pornic  that  he  encountered 
the  fateful  gipsy  whom  he  calls  Fifine.  Arnold,  years 
before,  had  read  unutterable  depths  of  soul  in  another 
gipsy  child  by  another  shore.  For  Browning  now,  as 
in  the  days  of  the  Flight  of  the  Duchess,  the  gipsy  sym- 
bolised the  life  of  joyous  detachment  from  the  con- 
straints of  society  and  civilisation.  The  elementary 
mood,  out  of  which  the  wondrous  woof  of  reasonings 
and  images  is  evolved,  is  simply  the  instinctive  beat  of 
the  spirit  of  romance  in  us  all,  in  sympathy  with  these 
light-hearted  losels  of  the  wild,  who  "cast  allegiance 
off,  play  truant,  nor  repine,"  and  though  disgraced  but 
seem  to  relish  life  the  more. 

The  beautiful  Prologue — one  of  the  most  original 
lyrics  in  the  language — strikes  the  key-note  :  — 


198  BROWNING 

"  Sometimes,  when  the  weather 
Is  blue,  and  warm  waves  tempt 
To  free  oneself  of  tether, 
And  try  a  life  exempt 

"  From  worldly  noise  and  dust, 
In  the  sphere  which  overbrims 
With  passion  and  thought, — why,  just 
Unable  to  fly,  one  swims.     .     .     . 

"  Emancipate  through  passion 

And  thought, — with  sea  for  sky, 
We  substitute,  in  a  fashion, 
For  heaven — poetry." 

It  is  this  "  emancipation  "  from  our  confinement  in 
the  bonds  of  prose,  commonplace,  and  routine,  by  a 
passion  and  thought-winged  imagination,  which  is  the 
true  subject  of  the  poem.  But  he  chooses  to  convey 
his  meaning,  as  usual,  through  the  rich  refracting 
medium  of  dramatic  characters  and  situations  quite 
unlike  his  own.  So  his  "  apology  for  poetry  "  becomes 
an  item  in  Don  Juan's  case  for  the  "  poetry  "  of  dalli- 
ance with  light-o'-loves.  Fifine  herself  acquires  new 
importance  ;  the  emancipated  gipsy  turns  into  the  pert 
seductive  coquette,  while  over  against  her  rises  the 
pathetic  shadow  of  the  "  wife  in  trouble,"  her  white 
fingers  pressing  Juan's  arm,  "  ravishingly  pure  "  in  her 
"  pale  constraint."  Between  these  three  persons  the 
moving  drama  is  played  out,  ending,  like  all  Don  Juan 
stories,  with  the  triumph  of  the  baser  influence.  Elvire, 
with  her  eloquent  silences  and  wistful  pathos,  is  an 
^/exquisite  creation, — a  wedded  sister  of  Shakespeare's 
Hero  ;  Fifine,  too,  with  her  strutting  bravado  and  "  pose 
half  frank,  half   fierce,"  shrills    her    discordant  note 


AFTERMATH  I99 

vivaciously  enough.  The  principal  speaker  himself  is 
the  most  complex  of  Browning's  casuists,  a  marvel- 
lously rich  and  many-hued  piece  of  portraiture.  This 
Juan  is  deeply  versed  in  all  the  activities  of  the  imagi- 
nation which  he  so  eloquently  defends.  Painting  and 
poetry,  science  and  philosophy,  are  at  his  command  ; 
above  all,  he  is  an  artist  and  a  poet  in  the  lore  of 
Love. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  kind  of  adventure  on  which 
Juan  claims  the  right  of  projecting  his  imagination  has 
close  affinities  with  the  habitual  procedure  of  Brown- 
ing's own.  Juan  defends  his  dealings  with  the  gay 
fizgig  Fifine  as  a  step  to  the  fuller  appreciation  of 
Elvire  ;  he  demands  freedom  to  escape  only  as  a  means 
of  possessing  more  surely  and  intimately  what  he  has. 
And  Browning's  "  emancipation  "  is  not  that  of  the 
purely  Romantic  poet,  who  pursues  a  visionary  ab- 
straction remote  from  all  his  visible  environment. 
The  emancipated  soul,  for  him,  was  rather  that  which 
incessantly  "  practised  with  "  its  environment,  fight- 
ing its  way  through  countless  intervening  films  of 
illusion  to  the  full  knowledge  of  itself  and  of  all  that  it 
originally  held  in  posse.  This  might  not  be  an  ade- 
quate account  of  his  own  artistic  processes,  in  which 
genial  instinct  played  a  larger,  and  resolute  will  a 
smaller,  part  than  his  invincible  athleticism  of  temper- 
ament would  suggest.  But  his  marvellous  wealth  of 
spontaneous  vision  was  fed  and  enriched  by  incessant 
"  practice  with  "  his  environment ;  his  idealism  was 
vitalised  by  the  ceaseless  play  of  eye  and  brain  upon 
the  least  promising  mortal  integuments  of  spirit ;  he 


200  BROWNING 

possessed  "  Elvire "  the  more  securely  for  having 
sent  forth  his  adventurous  imagination  to  practise  upon 
innumerable  Fifines. 

The  poem  itself — as  a  defence  of  his  poetic  methods 
— was  an  u  adventure  "  in  which  imagination  played 
an  unusually  splendid  part.  A  succession  of  brilliant 
and  original  images,  visions,  similes,  parables,  exhibits 
the  twofold  nature  of  the  "stuff"  with  which  the 
artist  plays, — its  inferiority,  its  poverty,  its  "falseness" 
in  itself,  its  needfulness,  its  potency,  its  worth  for  him. 
It  is  the  water  which  supports  the  swimmer,  but  in 
which  he  cannot  live;  the  dross  of  straw  and  chaff 
which  yields  the  brilliant  purity  of  flame  (c.  55);  the 
technical  cluster  of  sounds  from  which  issues  u  music 
— that  burst  of  pillared  cloud  by  day  and  pillared  fire 
by  night"  (c.  41).  The  whole  poem  is  haunted  by 
the  sense  of  dissonance  which  these  images  suggest 
between  the  real  and  the  apparent  meaning  of  things. 
Browning's  world,  else  so  massive  and  so  indubitable, 
becomes  unsubstantial  and  phantasmal,  an  illusive 
pageant  in  which  Truth  is  present  only  under  a  mask, 
being  "  forced  to  manifest  itself  through  falsehood." 
Juan,  who  declares  that,  unlike  poets,  u  we  prose- 
folk  "  always  dream,  has,  in  effect,  a  visionary  quality 
of  imagination  which  suits  his  thesis  and  his  theme. 
The  "  dream  figures  "  of  the  famous  ladies  pass  before 
us  like  a  gorgeous  tapestry, — some  rich  Venetian  ren- 
dering of  a  medieval  ballade  du  temps  jadis  ;  then  Ven- 
ice itself  opens  before  us,  all  moving  life  and  colour, 
under  the  enchantment  of  Schumann's  Carnival,  only 
to  resolve  itself  into  a  vaster  pageant  of  the  world, 


AFTERMATH  201 

with  its  mighty  fanes  of  art  and  science,  which,  seem- 
ingly "  fixed  as  fate,  not  fairy-work,"  yet 

"  tremblingly  grew  blank 
From  bright,  then  broke  afresh  in  triumph, — ah,  but  sank 
As  soon,  for  liquid  change  through  artery  and  vein 
O'  the  very  marble  wound  its  way." 

The  August  of  1872  found  Browning  and  his  sister 
once  more  in  France.  This  time,  however,  not  at 
Croisic  but  Saint  Aubin — the  primitive  hamlet  on  the 
Norman  coast  to  which  he  had  again  been  drawn  by 
his  attachment  to  Joseph  Milsand.  At  a  neighbour- 
ing village  was  another  old  friend,  Miss  Thackeray, 
who  has  left  a  charming  account  of  the  place.  They 
walked  along  a  narrow  cliff-path  :  "  The  seacoast 
far  below  our  feet,  the  dried,  arid  vegetation  of  the 
sandy  way,  the  rank  yellow  snapdragon  lining  the 
paths.  .  .  .  We  entered  the  Brownings'  house. 
The  sitting-room  door  opened  to  the  garden  and  the 
sea  beyond — a  fresh-swept  bare  floor,  a  table,  three 
straw  chairs,  one  book  upon  the  table."  A  misunder- 
standing, now  through  the  good  offices  of  Milsand 
happily  removed,  had  clouded  the  friendship  of 
Browning  and  Miss  Thackeray ;  and  his  joyous  re- 
vulsion of  heart  has  left  characteristic  traces  in  the 
poem  which  he  dedicated  to  his  "  fair  friend."  The 
very  title  is  jest — an  outflow  of  high  spirits  in  an  ex- 
uberantly hearty  hand-shake — u  British  man  with 
British  maid " ;  the  country  of  the  "  Red-cotton 
Night-cap "  being  in  fact,  of  course,  the  country 
which    her    playful    realism    had    already    nicknamed 


202  BROWNING 

"White-cotton  Night-cap  Country,"  from  the  white 
lawn  head-dress  of  the  Norman  women.  Nothing  so 
typical  and  every-day  could  set  Browning's  imagina- 
tion astir,  and  among  the  wilderness  of  white,  inno- 
cent and  flavourless,  he  caught  at  a  story  which 
promised  to  be  "  wrong  and  red  and  picturesque," 
and  vary  u  by  a  splotch  the  righteous  flat  of 
insipidity." 

The  story  of  Miranda  the  Paris  jeweller  and  his 
mistress,  Clara  de  Millefleurs,  satisfied  this  condition 
sufficiently.  Time  had  not  mellowed  the  raw  crudity 
of  this  "  splotch,"  which  Browning  found  recorded  in 
no  old,  square,  yellow  vellum  book,  but  in  the  French 
newspapers  of  that  very  August;  the  final  judgment 
of  the  court  at  Caen  ("  Vire")  being  actually  pro- 
nounced while  he  wrote.  The  poet  followed  on  the 
heels  of  the  journalist,  and  borrowed,  it  must  be 
owned,  not  a  little  of  his  methods.  If  any  poem  of 
Browning's  may  be  compared  to  versified  special  cor- 
respondence, it  is  this.  He  tells  the  story,  in  his  own 
person,  in  blank  verse  of  admirable  ease  and  fluency, 
from  which  every  pretence  of  poetry  is  usually  re- 
mote. What  was  it  in  this  rather  sordid  tale  that 
arrested  him  ?  Clearly  the  strangely  mingled  char- 
acter of  Miranda.  Castile  and  Paris  contend  in  his 
blood ;  and  his  love  adventures,  begun  on  the  boule- 
vards and  in  their  spirit,  end  in  an  ecstasy  of  fantastic 
devotion.  His  sins  are  commonplace  and  prosaic 
enough,  but  his  repentances  detach  him  altogether 
from  the  herd  of  ordinary  penitents  as  well  as  of 
ordinary  sinners — confused  and  violent  gesticulations 


AFTERMATH  203 

of  a  visionary  ascetic  struggling  to  liberate  himself 
from  the  bonds  of  his  own  impurity.  "  The  heart 
was  wise  according  to  its  lights  "  ;  but  the  head  was 
incapable  of  shaping  this  vague  heart-wisdom  into 
coherent  practice.  A  parallel  piece  of  analysis  pre- 
sents Clara  as  a  finished  artist  in  life — a  Meissonier 
of  limited  but  flawless  perfection  in  her  unerring  se- 
lection of  means  to  ends.  In  other  words,  this  not 
very  attractive  pair  struck  Browning  as  another  ex- 
ample of  his  familiar  contrast  between  those  who 
"  try  the  low  thing  and  leave  it  done,"  and  those  who 
aim  higher  and  fail.  Yet  it  must  be  owned  that  these 
Brown ingesque  ideas  are  not  thoroughly  wrought  into 
the  substance  of  the  poem ;  they  are  rather  a  sort  of 
marginal  embroidery  woven  on  to  a  story  which,  as  a 
whole,  has  neither  been  shaped  by  Browning's  hand 
nor  vitalised  with  his  breath.  Neither  Clara  nor 
Miranda  can  be  compared  in  dramatic  force  with  his 
great  creations ;  even  Clara's  harangue  to  the  Cous- 
inry,  with  all  its  passion  and  flashing  scorn,  is  true 
rather  to  her  generic  character  as  the  injured  champion 
of  her  dead  lord  than  to  her  individual  variety  of  it — 
the  woman  of  subtle,  inflexible,  yet  calculating  de- 
votion. Miranda's  soliloquy  before  he  throws  himself 
from  the  Tower  is  a  powerful  piece  of  construction, 
but,  when  the  book  is  closed,  what  we  seem  to  see 
in  it  is  not  the  fantastical  goldsmith  surveying  the  mo- 
tives of  his  life,  but  Browning  filling  in  the  bizarre  out- 
lines of  his  construction  with  appropriate  psychological 
detail.  Another  symptom  of  decline  in  Browning's 
most   characteristic  kind  of  power  is  probably  to  be 


204  BROWNING 

found  in  the  play  of  symbolism  which  invests  with  an 
air  of  allegorical  abstraction  the  "  Tower  "  and  the 
"  Turf,"  and  makes  the  whole  poem,  with  all  its  pro- 
saic realism,  intelligibly  regarded  as  a  sort  of  fantasia 
on  self-indulgence  and  self-control. 

The  summer  retreat  of  1874  was  found  once  more 
on  the  familiar  north  coast  of  France, — this  time  at 
the  quiet  hamlet  of  Mers,  near  Treport.  In  this 
lonely  place,  with  scarcely  a  book  at  hand,  he  wrote 
the  greater  part  of  the  most  prodigally  and  exuber- 
antly learned  of  all  his  poems — Aristophanes'  Apology 
(published  April,  1875).  It  was  not  Browning's  way 
to  repeat  his  characters,  but  the  story  of  Balaustion, 
the  brilliant  girl  devotee  of  Euripides,  had  proved  an 
admirable  setting  for  his  interpretations  of  Greek 
drama  j  and  the  charm  of  that  earlier  "  most  delight- 
ful of  May-month  amusements  "  was  perhaps  not  the 
less  easily  revived  in  these  weeks  of  constant  com- 
panionship with  a  devoted  woman-friend  of  his  own. 
Balaustion  is  herself  full  ten  years  older  than  at  the 
time  of  her  first  adventure ;  her  fresh  girlish  enthusi- 
asm has  ripened  into  the  ardent  conviction  of  intel- 
lectual maturity ;  she  can  not  only  cite  Euripides,  but 
vindicate  his  art  against  his  mightiest  assailant.  Situ- 
ation, scenery,  language,  are  here  all  more  complex. 
The  first  Adventure  was  almost  Greek  in  its  radiant 
and  moving  simplicity ;  the  last  is  Titanically  Brown- 
ingesque,  a  riot  of  the  least  Hellenic  elements  of 
Browning's  mind  with  the  uptorn  fragments  of  the 
Hellenic  world.  Moreover,  the  issue  is  far  from  be- 
ing equally  clear.     The  glory  of  Euripides  is  still  the 


AFTERMATH  205 

ostensible  theme ;  but  Aristophanes  had  so  many 
points  of  contact  with  Browning  himself,  and  ap- 
peals in  his  defence  to  so  many  root-ideas  of  Brown- 
ing's own,  that  the  reader  hesitates  between  the  poet 
to  whom  Browning's  imagination  allied  him,  and  the 
poet  whom  his  taste  preferred.  His  Aristophanes  is, 
like  himself,  the  poetry  of  "  Life,"  a  broad  and  gen- 
erous realist,  who  like  Lippo  Lippi  draws  all  existence 
into  his  art ;  an  enemy  of  all  asceticisms  and  abstrac- 
tions, who  drives  his  meaning  home  through  vivid 
concrete  example  and  drastic  phrase,  rather  than  by 
enunciating  the  impressive  moral  commonplaces  of 
tragic  poetry.1  Aristophanes,  too,  had  been  abused 
for  his  "  unintelligible  "  poetry, — u  mere  psychologic 
puzzling,"2 — by  a  "chattering"  public  which  pre- 
ferred the  lilt  of  nursery  rhymes.  The  magnificent 
portrait  of  Aristophanes  is  conceived  in  the  very 
spirit  of  the  riotous  exuberance  of  intellect  and 
senses — 

"  Mind  a-wantoning 
At  ease  of  undisputed  mastery 
Over  the  body's  brood  " — 

which  was  so  congenial  to  the  realist  in  Browning ; 
"  the  clear  baldness — all  his  head  one  brow  " — and 
the  surging  flame  of  red  from  cheek  to  temple ;  the 
huge  eyeballs  rolling  back  native  fire,  imperiously 
triumphant,  the  "  pursed  mouth's  pout  aggressive," 
and  "  the  beak  supreme  above,"  "  beard  whitening 
under  like  a  vinous  foam." 

1  Arist.  Ap.t  p.  698.  8  lb.,  p.  688. 


206  BROWNING 

Balaustion  is  herself  the  first  to  recognise  the 
divinity  shrouded  in  this  half  satyr-like  form  :  in  some 
of  the  finest  verses  of  the  poem  she  compares  him 
to  the  sea-god,  whom  as  a  child  she  had  once  seen 
peer 

"  large-looming  from  his  wave, 
*  *  *  *  *  * 

A  sea-worn  face,  sad  as  mortality, 
Divine  with  yearning  after  fellowship," 

while  below  the  surface  all  was  "  tail  splash,  frisk  of 
fin."  And  when  Balaustion  has  recited  her  poet's 
masterpiece  of  tragic  pathos,  Aristophanes  lays  aside 
the  satirist  a  moment  and  attests  his  affinity  to  the 
divine  poets  by  the  noble  song  of  Thamyris.  The 
u  transcript  from  Euripides  "  itself  is  quite  secondary 
in  interest  to  this  vivid  and  powerful  dramatic  frame- 
work. Far  from  being  a  vital  element  in  the  action, 
like  the  recital  of  the  Alkestis,  the  reading  of  the 
Hercules  Furens  is  an  almost  gratuitous  diversion  in 
the  midst  of  the  talk ;  and  the  tameness  of  a  literal 
(often  awkwardly  literal)  translation  is  rarely  broken 
by  those  inrushes  of  alien  genius  which  are  the  glory 
of  Browning's  Alkestis.  Yet  the  very  self-restraint 
sprang  probably  from  Browning's  deep  sensibility  to 
the  pathos  of  the  story.  "Large  tears,"  as  Mrs.  Orr 
has  told  us,  fell  from  his  eyes,  and  emotion  choked 
his  voice,  when  he  first  read  it  aloud  to  her. 

The  Inn  Album  is,  like  Red-cotton  Night-cap  Coun- 
try, a  versified  novel,  melodramatic  in  circumstances, 
frankly  familiar  in   scenery  and   atmosphere.     Once 


AFTERMATH  207 

more,  as  in  the  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  and  in  "James 
Lee's  Wife,  Browning  turned  for  his  "  incidents  in 
the  development  of  souls "  to  the  passion  and  sin- 
frayed  lives  of  his  own  countrymen.  But  no  halo 
of  seventeenth-century  romance  here  tempers  the 
sordid  modernity  of  the  facts ;  the  u  James  Lee  "  of 
this  tragedy  appears  in  person  and  is  drawn  with  re- 
morseless insistence  on  every  mean  detail  which  an- 
nounces the  "  rag-and-feather  hero-sham."  Every- 
thing except  his  wit  and  eloquence  is  sham  and 
shabby  in  this  Club-and-Country-house  villain,  who 
violates  more  signally  than  any  figure  in  poetic 
literature  the  canon  that  the  contriver  of  the  tragic 
harms  must  not  be  totally  despicable.  A  thief,  as 
Schiller  said,  can  qualify  for  a  tragic  hero  only  by 
adding  to  his  theft  the  more  heroic  crime  of  murder ; 
but  Browning's  Elder  Man  compromises  even  the 
professional  perfidies  of  a  Don  Juan  with  shady  deal- 
ings at  cards  and  the  like  which  Don  Juan  himself 
would  have  scouted.  In  Fifine  the  Don  Juan  of 
tradition  was  lifted  up  into  and  haloed  about  with 
poetical  splendours  not  his  own  ;  here  he  is  depressed 
into  an  equally  alien  sorriness  of  prose.  But  the 
decisive  and  commanding  figure,  for  Browning  and 
for  his  readers,  is  of  course  his  victim  and  Nemesis, 
the  Elder  Lady.  She  is  as  unlike  Pompilia  as  he  is 
unlike  Guido  ;  but  we  see  not  less  clearly  how  the 
upleaping  of  the  soul  of  womanhood  in  the  child, 
under  the  stress  of  foul  and  cruel  wrongs,  has  once 
more  asserted  its  power  over  him.  And  if  Pompilia 
often  recalls  his  wife,  the  situation  of  the  Elder  Lady 


208  BROWNING 

may  fairly  remind  us  of  that  of  Marion  Erie  in 
Aurora  Leigh.  But  many  complexities  in  the  work- 
ing out  mark  Browning's  design.  The  betrayed  girl, 
scornfully  refusing  her  betrayer's  tardy  offer  of  mar- 
riage, has  sought  a  refuge,  as  the  wife  of  a  clergyman, 
in  the  drudgery  of  a  benighted  parish.  The  chance 
meeting  of  the  two,  four  years  after,  in  the  inn 
parlour,  their  bitter  confessions,  through  the  veil  of 
mutual  hatred,  that  life  has  been  ruined  for  both, — 
he,  with  his  scandalous  successes  growing  at  last 
notorious,  she,  the  soul  which  once  "  sprang  at  love," 
now  sealed  deliberately  against  beauty,  and  spent  in 
preaching  monstrous  doctrines  which  neither  they 
nor  their  savage  parishioners  believe  nor  observe, 
— all  this  is  imagined  very  powerfully  and  on 
lines  which  would  hardly  have  occurred  to  any  one 
else. 

The  Pacchiarotto  volume  forms  a  kind  of  epilogue 
to  the  work  of  the  previous  half-dozen  years.  Since 
The  Ring  and  the  Book  he  had  become  a  famous  per- 
sonage ;  his  successive  poems  had  been  everywhere 
reviewed  at  length  ;  a  large  public  was  genuinely  in- 
terested in  him,  while  a  yet  larger  complained  of  his 
"  obscurity,"  but  did  not  venture  to  ignore  him,  and 
gossiped  eagerly  about  his  private  life.  He  himself, 
mingling  freely,  an  ever-welcome  guest,  in  the 
choicest  London  society,  had  the  air  of  having 
accepted  the  world  as  cordially  as  it  on  the  whole 
accepted  him.  Yet  barriers  remained.  Poems  like  the 
Red-cotton  Night-cap  Country,  the  Inn  Album,  and 
Fifine  had  alienated   many  whom  The   Ring  and  the 


AFTERMATH  200, 

Book  had  won  captive,  and  embarrassed  the  defence 
of  some  of  Browning's  staunchest  devotees.  No- 
body knew  better  than  the  popular  diner-out,  Robert 
Browning,  how  few  of  the  men  and  women  who 
listened  to  his  brilliant  talk  had  any  grip  upon  his 
inner  mind ;  and  he  did  little  to  assist  their  insight. 
The  most  affable  and  accessible  of  men  up  to  a  cer- 
tain point,  he  still  held  himself,  in  the  deeper  matters 
of  his  art,  serenely  and  securely  aloof.  But  it  was  a 
good-humoured,  not  a  cynical,  aloofness,  which  found 
quite  natural  expression  in  a  volley  of  genial  chaff  at 
the  critics  who  thought  themselves  competent  to 
teach  him  his  business.  This  is  the  main,  at  least 
the  most  dominant,  note  of  Pacchiarotto.  It  is  like  an 
aftermath  of  Aristophanes*  Apology.  But  the  English 
poet  scarcely  deigns  to  defend  his  art.  No  beautiful 
and  brilliant  woman  is  there  to  put  him  on  his  mettle 
and  call  out  his  chivalry.  The  mass  of  his  critics 
are  roundly  made  game  of,  in  a  boisterously  genial 
sally,  as  "  sweeps "  officiously  concerned  at  his 
excess  of  "  smoke. "  Pacchiarotto  is  a  whimsical  tale 
of  a  poor  painter  who  came  to  grief  in  a  Quixotic 
effort  to  "  reform  "  his  fellows.  Rhyme  was  never 
more  brilliantly  abused  than  in  this  tour .de force,  in 
which  the  clang  of  the  machinery  comes  near  to 
killing  the  music*  More  seriously,  in  the  finely 
turned  stanzas  At  the  Mermaid,  and  House,  he  avails 
himself  of  the  habitual  reticence  of  Shakespeare  to 
defend  by  implication  his  own  reserve,  not  without 
a  passing  sarcasm  at  the  cost  of  the  poet  who  took 
Europe    by   storm    with   the   pageant   of   his   broken 


210  BROWNING 

heart.  House  is  for  the  most  part  rank  prose,  but  it 
sums  up  incisively  in  the  well-known  retort : 

"  *  With  this  same  key 
Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart?  once  more  ! 

Did  Shakespeare  ?     If  so,  the  less  Shakespeare  he  !  " 

This  "  house "  image  is  singularly  frequent  in  this 
volume.  The  poet  seems  haunted  by  the  idea  of  the 
barrier  walls,  which  keep  off  the  public  gaze,  but  ad- 
mit the  privileged  spirit.  In  Fears  and  Scruples  it 
symbolises  the  reticence  of  God.  In  Appearances  the 
"  poor  room "  in  which  troth  was  plighted  and  the 
u  rich  room  "  in  which  "  the  other  word  was  spoken  " 
become  half  human  in  sympathy.  A  woman's  u  nat- 
ural magic "  makes  the  bare  walls  she  dwells  in  a 
"  fairy  tale "  of  verdure  and  song.  The  prologue 
seems  deliberately  to  strike  this  note,  with  its  exquisite 
idealisation  of  the  old  red  brick  wall  and  its  creepers 
lush  and  lithe, — a  formidable  barrier  indeed,  but  one 
which  spirit  and  love  can  pass.  For  here  the  "  wall  " 
is  the  unsympathetic  throng  who  close  the  poet  in ; 
there 

"  I — prison-bird,  with  a  ruddy  strife 

At  breast,  and  a  life  whence  storm-notes  start  — 

Hold  on,  hope  hard  in  the  subtle  thing 

That's  spirit :  though  cloistered  fast,  soar  free ; 

Account  as  wood,  brick,  stone,  this  ring 

Of  the  rueful  neighbours,  and — forth  to  thee  !  " 

These  stanzas  finely  hint  at  a  second  theme  which 
wanders  in  and  out  among  the  strident  notes  of 
Browning's   anti-critical  "  apologetics."     Of  all  the 


AFTERMATH  211 

springs  of  poetry  none  lay  deeper  in  Browning  than 
love ;  to  the  last  he  could  sing  of  love  with  the  full 
inspiration  of  his  best  time  j  and  the  finest  things  in 
this  volume  are  concerned  with  it.  But  as  compared 
with  the  love-lays  of  the  Dramatic  Lyrics  or  Men  and 
Women  there  is  something  wistful,  far  off,  even  elegiac, 
in  this  love-poetry.  A  barrier,  undefinable  but  im- 
passable, seems  to  part  us  from  the  full  tide  of  youth- 
ful passion.  The  richest  in  this  tender  sunset  beauty 
is  the  St.  Martin's  Summer,  where  the  late  love  is  sud- 
denly smitten  with  the  discovery  that  its  apparent 
warmth  is  a  ghost  of  old  passion  buried  but  unallayed. 
Again  and  again-  Browning  here  dwells  upon  the 
magic  of  love, — as  if  love  still  retained  for  the  ageing 
poet  an  isolated  and  exceptional  irradiating  power  in 
a  world  fast  fading  into  commonplace  and  prose. 
The  brief,  exquisite  snatches  of  song,  Natural  Magic, 
Magical  Nature,  are  joyous  tributes  to  the  power  of 
the  charm,  paid  by  one  who  remains  master  of  his 
heart.  Numpholeptos  is  the  long-drawn  enchanted 
reverie  of  one  in  the  very  toils  of  the  spell — a  thing 
woven  of  dreams  and  emotions,  dark-glowing,  irides- 
cent to  t,he  eye,  languorous  to  the  ear,  impalpable  to 
the  analytic  intellect.  In  Bifurcation  he  puts  again, 
with  more  of  subtlety  and  of  detachment,  the  problem 
of  the  conventional  conflict  of  love  with  duty,  so 
peremptorily  decided  in  love's  favour  in  The  Statue 
and  the  Bust.  A  Forgiveness  is  a  powerful  reworking 
of  the  theme  of  My  Last  Duchess,  with  an  addett 
irony  of  situation  :  Browning,  who  excels  in  the 
drama  of  silent  figures,  has  drawn  none  more  effective 


212  BROWNING 

than  this  guilty  priest,  who  grinds  his  teeth  behind  the 
confessional  grating  as  he  listens  perforce  to  the  story 
of  his  own  crime  from  the  lips  of  the  wronged  hus- 
band, still  cherishing  the  hope  that  he  is  unrecognised, 
or  at  the  worst  may  elude  vengeance  in  his  cloister's 
solitude  j  until  the  avenger's  last  words  throw  off  the 
mask  :  — 

"  Hardly,  I  think !     As  little  helped  his  brow 
The  cloak  then,  Father — as  your  grate  helps  now  !  " 

From  these  high  matters  of  passion  and  tragedy  we 
pass  by  easy  steps  into  the  jocular-colloquial  region  in 
which  the  volume  opened.  Painting  in  these  later 
days  of  Browning's  has  ceased  to  yield  high,  or  even 
serious  poetry,  and  Baldinucci's  tale  of  shabby  trick- 
ery cannot  be  compared,  even  for  grotesque  humour, 
with  the  powerful  grotesquerie  of  Holy- Cross  Day, 
while  it  wholly  lacks  the  great  lift  of  Hebraic  sublim- 
ity at  the  close.  The  Epilogue  returns  to  the  com- 
bative apologetics  of  the  title  poem ;  but,  unlike  that, 
does  attempt  some  reply  to  the  cavils  of  the  discon- 
tented. They  cannot  have  the  strong  and  the  sweet 
— body  and  bouquet — at  once,  he  tells  them  in  effect, 
and  he  chooses  to  be  strong,  to  give  the  good  grape 
and  leave  the  cowslips  growing  in  the  meadow.  The 
argument  was  but  another  sally  of  the  poet's  good- 
humoured  chaff,  and  would  not  have  stood  the  scru- 
tiny of  his  subtler  mind.  Doubtless  he,  like  Ben 
Jonson,  inclined  to  see  signs  of  the  "  strong  "  in  the 
astringent  and  the  gritty ;  but  no  one  knew  better, 
when  he  chose,  to  wed  his  "  strength  "  with  "  sweet- 


AFTERMATH  213 

ness."  The  falling-off  of  the  present  volume  com- 
pared with  Men  and  Women  or  Dramatis  Persona  lay 
less  in  the  lack  of  either  quality  than  in  his  failure  to 
bring  them  together.  Of  the  "  stiff  brew  "  there  is 
plenty ;  but  the  choicest  aroma  comes  from  that 
"  wine  of  memories  " — the  fragrant  reminiscences — 
which  the  poet  affected  to  despise.  The  epilogue 
ends,  incorrigibly,  with  a  promise  to  "  posset  and 
cosset  "  the  cavilling  reader  henceforward  with  "  net- 
tle-broth," good  for  the  sluggish  blood  and  the  disor- 
dered stomach. 

The  following  year  brought  a  production  which  the 
cavilling  reader  might  excusably  regard  as  a  fulfilment 
of  this  jocose  threat.  For  the  translation  of  the 
Agamemnon  (1877)  was  not  in  any  sense  a  serious 
contribution  to  the  English  knowledge  and  love  of 
Greek  drama.  The  Balaustion  u  transcripts "  had 
betrayed  an  imperfect  sensibility  to  the  finer  qualities 
of  Greek  dramatic  style.  But  Browning  seems  to 
have  gone  to  work  upon  the  greatest  of  antique  trage- 
dies with  the  definite  intention  of  showing,  by  a  ver- 
sion of  literal  fidelity,  how  little  the  Greek  drama  at 
its  best  owed  to  Greek  speech.  And  he  has  little 
difficulty  in  making  the  oracular  brevity  of  ^schylus 
look  bald,  and  his  sublime  incoherences  frigid.1  The 
result  is,  nevertheless,  very  interesting  and  instructive 
to  the  student  of  Browning's  mind.     Nowhere  else 

1  It  is  hard  to  explain  how  Browning  came  also  to  choose  his 
restless  hendecasyllables  as  a  medium  for  the  stately  iambic  of 
iEschylus.  It  is  more  like  Fletcher  outdoing  himself  in  double 
endings. 


214  BROWNING 

do  we  feel  so  acutely  how  foreign  to  his  versatile  and 
athletic  intellect  was  the  primitive  and  elemental 
imagination  which  interprets  the  heart  and  the  con- 
science of  nations.  His  acute  individualism  in  effect 
betrayed  him,  and  made  his  too  faithful  translation 
resemble  a  parody  of  this  mighty  fragment  of  the 
mind  of  Themistoclean  Athens  by  one  of  the  brilliant 
irresponsible  Sophists  of  the  next  generation. 

The  spring  and  summer  of  1877  were  not  pro- 
ductive. The  summer  holiday  was  spent  in  a  new 
haunt  among  the  Savoy  Alps,  and  Browning  missed 
the  familiar  stimulus  of  the  sea-air.  But  the  early 
autumn  brought  an  event  which  abruptly  shattered  his 
quiescence,  and  called  forth,  presently,  the  most  inti- 
mately personal  poem  of  his  later  years.  Miss  Ann 
Egerton-Smith,  his  gifted  and  congenial  companion  at 
London  concerts,  and  now,  for  the  fourth  year  in  suc- 
cession, in  the  summer  villeggiatura,  died  suddenly  of 
heart  disease  at  dawn  on  Sept.  14,  as  she  was  preparing 
for  a  mountain  expedition  with  her  friends.  It  was 
not  one  of  those  losses  which  stifle  thought  or  sweep  it 
along  on  the  vehement  tide  of  lyric  utterance;  it  was 
rather  of  the  kind  which  set  it  free,  creating  an  at- 
mosphere of  luminous  serenity  about  it,  and  allaying 
all  meaner  allurements  and  distractions.  Elegy  is 
often  the  outcome  of  such  moods ;  and  the  elegiac 
note  is  perceptible  in  the  grave  music  of  La  Saisiaz. 
Yet  the  poem  as  a  whole  does  not  even  distantly  re- 
call, save  in  the  quiet  intensity  of  its  ground  tone,  the 
noble  poems  in  which  Milton  or  Shelley,  Arnold  or 
Tennyson,  commemorated    their   dead   friends.     He 


AFTERMATH  215 

himself  commemorated  no  other  dead  friend  in  a  way 
like  this ;  to  his  wife's  memory  he  had  given  only  the 
sacred  silence,  the  impassioned  hymn,  the  wealth  of 
poetry  inspired  by  her  spirit  but  not  addressed  to  her. 
This  poem,  also,  was  written  "once,  and  only  once, 
and  for  one  only."  La  Saisaiz  recalls  to  us,  per- 
versely perhaps,  poems  of  his  in  which  no  personal 
sorrow  beats.  The  glory  of  the  dawn  and  the  moun- 
tain-peak— Saleve  with  its  outlook  over  the  snowy 
splendour  of  Mont  Blanc — instils  itself  here  into  the 
mourner's  mood,  as,  long  before,  a  like  scene  had  ani- 
mated the  young  disciples  of  the  Grammarian ;  while 
the  "  cold  music  "  of  Galuppi's  Toccata  seems  to  be 
echoed  inauspiciously  in  these  lingering  trochaics. 
Something  of  both  moods  survives,  but  the  dominant 
tone  is  a  somewhat  grey  and  tempered  hope,  remote 
indeed  from  the  oppressive  sense  of  evanescence,  the 
crumbling  mortality,  of  the  second  poem,  remote  no 
less  from  the  hushed  exaltation,  the  subdued  but  rap- 
turous confidence  of  the  first. 

The  poet  is  growing  old  j  the  unity  of  poetic  vision 
is  breaking  up  into  conflicting  aspects  only  to  be  ad- 
justed in  the  give  and  take  of  debate ;  he  puts  off  his 
singing  robes  to  preside  as  moderator,  while  Fancy 
and  Reason  exchange  thrust  and  parry  on  the  problem 
of  immortality ;  delivering  at  last,  as  the  "  sad  sum- 
ming up  of  all,"  a  balanced  and  tentative  affirmation. 
And  he  delivers  the  decision  with  an  oppressive  sense 
that  it  is  but  his  own.  He  is  "Athanasius  contra 
mundum  "  ;  and  he  dwells,  with  a  "  pallid  smile  " 
which   Athanasius   did    not  inspire,    upon  the    mar- 


2l6  BROWNING 

vellous  power  of  fame.  Nay,  Athanasius  himself 
has  his  doubts.  Even  his  sober  hope  is  not  a  secure 
possession ;  but  in  the  gloom  of  London's  November 
he  remembers  that  he  had  hoped  in  the  sunset  glory 
of  Saleve,  and  "  saves  up  "  the  memory  of  that  preg- 
nant hour  for  succour  in  less  prosperous  times. 

The  Two  Poets  of  Croisic,  published  with  La  Saisaiz^ 
cannot  be  detached  from  it.  The  opening  words  take 
up  the  theme  of  "  Fame,"  there  half  mockingly  played 
with,  and  the  whole  poem  is  a  sarcastic  criticism  of 
the  worship  of  Fame.  The  stories  of  Rene  Gentil- 
homme  and  Paul  Desfarges  Maillard  are  told  with  an 
immense  burly  vivacity,  in  the  stanza,  and  a  Brown- 
ingesque  version  of  the  manner,  of  Beppo.  Both 
stories  turned  upon  those  decisive  moments  which 
habitually  caught  Browning's  eye.  Only,  in  their 
case,  the  decisive  moment  was  not  one  of  the  reveal- 
ing crises  which  laid  bare  their  utmost  depths,  but  a 
crisis  which  temporarily  invested  them  with  a  capri- 
cious effulgence.  Yet  these  instantaneous  transforma- 
tions have  a  peculiar  charm  for  Browning ;  they  touch 
and  fall  in  with  his  fundamental  ideas  of  life ;  and  the 
delicious  prologue  and  epilogue  hint  these  graver 
analogies  in  a  dainty  music  which  pleasantly  relieves 
the  riotous  uncouthness  of  the  tale  itself.  If  Rene's 
life  is  suddenly  lighted  up,  so  is  the  moss  bank  with 
the  "  blue  flash  "  of  violets  in  spring ;  and  the  diplo- 
matic sister  through  whose  service  Paul  wins  his  laurels 
has  a  more  spiritual  comrade  in  the  cicada,  who,  with 
her  little  heart  on  fire,  sang  forth  the  note  of  the 
broken  string  and  won  her  singer  his  prize.     Brown- 


AFTERMATH  21 7 

ing's  pedestrian  verse  passes  into  poetry  as  he  disen- 
gages from  the  transient  illusions,  the  flickerings  and 
bickerings,  of  Fame,  the  eternal  truth  of  Love.  But 
it  is  only  in  the  closing  stanzas  of  the  main  poem 
that  his  thought  clearly  emerges ;  when,  having  ex- 
posed the  vanity  of  fame  as  a  test  of  poetic  merit,  he 
asks  how,  then,  poets  shall  be  tried ;  and  lays  down 
the  characteristic  criterion,  a  happy  life.  But  it  is  the 
happiness  of  Rabbi  ben  Ezra,  a  joy  three  parts  pain, 
the  happiness  won  not  by  ignoring  evil  but  by  mas- 
tering it !  — 

"  So,  force  is  sorrow,  and  each  sorrow,  force : 

What  then  ?  since  Swiftness  gives  the  charioteer 

The  palm,  his  hope  be  in  the  vivid  horse 
Whose  neck  God  clothed  with  thunder,  not  the  steer 

Sluggish  and  safe  !     Yoke  Hatred,  Crime,  Remorse, 
Despair :  but  ever  mid  the  whirling  fear 

Let,  through  the  tumult,  break  the  poet's  face 

Radiant,  assured  his  wild  slaves  win  the  race  ! " 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    LAST   DECADE 
Where  the  quiet-coloured  end  of  evening  smiled. 

Since  the  catastrophe  of  1861  Browning  had  not  en- 
tered Italy.  In  the  autumn  of  1878  he  once  more 
bent  his  steps  thither.  Florence,  indeed,  he  refused 
to  revisit ;  it  was  burnt  in  upon  his  brain  by  memories 
intolerably  dear.  But  in  Venice  the  charm  of  Italy 
reasserted  itself,  and  he  returned  during  his  remaining 
autumns  with  increasing  frequency  to  the  old-fash- 
ioned hostelry,  DelP  Universo,  on  the  Grand  Canal, 
or  latterly,  to  the  second  home  provided  by  the  hospi- 
tality of  his  gifted  and  congenial  American  friend, 
Mrs.  Arthur  Bronson.  Asolo,  too,  the  town  of  Pippa, 
he  saw  again,  after  forty  years'  absence,  with  poignant 
feelings, — "  such  things  have  begun  and  ended  with 
me  in  the  interval !  "  But  the  poignancy  of  memory 
did  not  restore  the  magic  of  perception  which  had 
once  been  his.  The  mood  described  ten  years  later 
in  the  Prologue  to  Asolando  was  already  dominant :  the 
iris  glow  of  youth  no  longer  glorified  every  common 
object  of  the  natural  world,  but  "  a  flower  was  just  a 
flower."  The  glory  still  came  by  moments ;  some 
of  his  most  thrilling  outbursts  of  song  belong  to  this 
time.  But  he  built  up  no  more  great  poems.  He 
was  approaching  seventy,  and  it  might  well  seem  that 
218 


THE    LAST    DECADE  219 

if  so  prolific  a  versifier  was  not  likely  to  become  silent 
his  poetry  was  rapidly  resolving  itself  into  wastes  of 
theological  argument,  of  grotesque  posturing,  or  in- 
tellectualised  anecdotage.  The  Dramatic  Idyls  of  1879 
and  1880  showed  that  these  more  serious  forebodings 
were  at  least  premature.  There  was  little  enough  in 
them,  no  doubt,  of  the  qualities  traditionally  con- 
nected with  "  idyll."  Browning  habitually  wore  his 
rue  with  a  difference,  and  used  familiar  terms  in  senses 
of  his  own.  There  is  nothing  here  of  "enchanted 
reverie  "  or  leisurely  pastoralism.  Browning's  "  idyls  " 
are  studies  in  life's  moments  of  stress  and  strain,  not 
in  its  secluded  pleasances  and  verdurous  wooded 
ways.  It  is  for  the  most  part  some  new  variation  of 
his  familiar  theme — the  soul  taken  in  the  grip  of  a 
tragic  crisis,  and  displaying  its  unsuspected  deeps  and 
voids.  Not  all  are  of  this  kind,  however;  and  while 
his  keenness  for  intense  and  abnormal  effects  is  as 
pronounced  as  ever,  he  seeks  them  in  an  even  more 
varied  field.  Italy,  the  main  haunt  of  his  song,  yields 
— it  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  inspired — one  only  of 
the  Idyls — Pietro  of  Abano.  Old  memories  of  Russia 
are  furbished  up  in  Ivan  Ivanovitch,  odd  gatherings 
from  the  byways  of  England  and  America  in  Ned 
Bratts,  Halbert  and  Hob^  Martin  Relph ;  and  he 
takes  from  Virgil's  hesitating  lips  the  hint  of  a  joyous 
pagan  adventure  of  the  gods,  and  tells  it  with  his  own 
brilliant  plenitude  and  volubility.  The  mythic  treat- 
ment of  nature  had  never  appealed  much  to  Brown- 
ing, even  as  a  gay  decorative  device  ;  he  was  pres- 
ently to   signalise   his   rejection   of  it   in    Gerard  de 


220  BROWNING 

Lairesse,  a  superb  example  of  what  he  rejected.  In 
all  mythology  there  was  something  foreign  to  the 
tenacious  humanity  of  his  intellect ;  he  was  most  open 
to  its  appeal  where  it  presented  divinity  stretching 
forth  a  helping  hand  to  man.  The  noble  "  idyl  "  of 
Echetlos  is  thus  a  counterpart,  in  its  brief  way,  to  the 
great  tragic  tale  of  Herakles  and  Alkestis.  Echetlos, 
the  mysterious  ploughman  who  shone  amid  the  ranks 
at  Marathon, 

"  clearing  Greek  earth  of  weed 
As  he  routed  through  the  Sabian  and  rooted  up  the  Mede," 

is  one  of  the  many  figures  which  thrill  us  with  Brown- 
ing's passion  for  Greece,  and  he  is  touched  with  a 
kind  of  magic  which  it  did  not  lie  in  his  nature  often 
to  communicate.  But  the  great  successes  of  the  Dra- 
matic Idyls  are  to  be  found  mainly  among  the  tales  of 
the  purely  human  kind  that  Browning  had  been  used 
to  tell.  Pheidippides  belongs  to  the  heroic  line  of 
How  they  brought  the  Good  News  and  Herve  RieL 
I  The  poetry  of  crisis,  of  the  sudden,  unforeseen,  and 
irremediable  critical  moment,  upon  which  so  much  of 
Browning's  psychology  converges,  is  carried  to  an 
unparalleled  point  of  intensity  in  Clive  and  Martin 
Relph.  And  in  most  of  these  "  idyls  "  there  emerges 
a  trait  always  implicit  in  Browning  but  only  dis- 
tinctly apparent  in  this  last  decade — the  ironical  con- 
trasts between  the  hidden  deeps  of  a  man's  soul  and 
the  assumptions  or  speculations  of  his  neighbours 
about  it.  The  two  worlds — inner  and  outer — fall 
more    sharply    apart ;    stranger   abysses   of  self-con- 


THE    LAST   DECADE  221 

sciousness  appear  on  the  one  side,  more  shallow  and 
complacent  illusions  on  the  other.  Relph's  horror  of 
remorse — painted  with  a  few  strokes  of  incomparable 
intensity,  like  his  '  Get  you  behind  the  man  I  am 
now,  you  man  that  I  used  to  be  !  ' — is  beyond  the 
comprehension  of  the  friendly  peasants ;  Clive's 
"  fear  "  is  as  much  misunderstood  by  his  auditor  as 
his  courage  by  the  soldiers ;  the  "  foolishness  "  of 
Muleykeh  equally  illudes  his  Arab  comrades  j  the 
Russian  villagers,  the  Pope,  and  the  lord  have  to 
fumble  through  a  long  process  of  argument  to  the 
conclusion  which  for  Ivan  had  been  the  merest  matter 
of  fact  from  the  first.  Admirable  in  its  quiet  irony  is 
the  contrast  between  the  stormy  debate  over  his  guilt 
or  innocence  and  his  serene  security  of  mind  as  he 
sits  cutting  out  a  toy  for  his  children :  — 

"  They  told  him  he  was  free 
As  air  to  walk  abroad  ;  «  How  otherwise  ?  '  asked  he." 

With  the  "  wild  men  "  Halbert  and  Hob  it  is  the 
spell  of  a  sudden  memory  which  makes  an  abrupt  rift 
between  the  men  they  have  seemed  to  be  and  the  men 
they  prove.  Browning  in  his  earlier  days  had  gloried 
in  these  moments  of  disclosure  ;  now  they  served  to 
emphasise  the  normal  illusion.  "  Ah  me  !  "  sounds 
the  note  of  the  proem  to  the  second  series,  scornful 
and  sad :  — 

"  Ah  me ! 
So  ignorant  of  man's  whole, 
Of  bodily  organs  plain  to  see  — 
So  sage  and  certain,  frank  and  free, 
About  what's  under  lock  and  key  — 
Man's  soul !  " 


222  BROWNING 

The  volume  called  Jocoseria  (1883)  contains  some 
fine  things,  and  abounds  with  Browning's  invariable 
literary  accomplishment  and  metrical  virtuosity,  but 
on  the  whole  points  to  the  gradual  disintegration  of 
his  genius.  "  Wanting  is — what  ?  "  is  the  significant 
theme  of  the  opening  lyric,  and  most  of  the  poetry 
has  something  which  recalls  the  "  summer  redundant " 
of  leaf  and  flower  not  "  breathed  above  "  by  vitalis- 
ing passion.  Compared  with  the  Men  and  Women 
or  the  Dramatis  Persona,  the  ^Jocoseria  as  a  whole  are 
indeed 

"  Framework  which  waits  for  a  picture  to  frame,    .     .     . 
Roses  embowering  with  nought  they  embower." 

Browning,  the  poet  of  the  divining  imagination,  is  less 
apparent  here  than  the  astute  ironical  observer  who 
delights  in  pricking  the  bubbles  of  affectation,  strip- 
ping off  the  masks  of  sham,  and  exhibiting  human 
nature  in  unadorned  nakedness.  Donald  is  an  ex- 
posure, savage  and  ugly,  of  savagery  and  ugliness  in 
Sport ;  Solomon  and  Balkts  a  reduction,  dainty  and  gay, 
of  these  fabled  paragons  of  wisdom  to  the  dimensions 
of  ordinary  vain  and  amorous  humanity.  Lilith  and 
Eve  unmask  themselves  under  stress  of  terror,  as 
Balkis  and  Solomon  at  the  compulsion  of  the  magic 
ring,  and  Adam  urbanely  replaces  the  mask.  Jocjjanan 
Hakkadosh,  the  saintly  pj^op  of  Israel,  expounds  from 
his  death-bed  a  gospel  of  struggle  and  endurance  in 
which  a  troubled  echo  of  the  great  strain  of  Ben  Ezra 
may  no  doubt  be  heard  ;  but  his  career  is,  as  a  whole, 
a  half-sad,  half-humorous  commentary  on  the  vain- 


THE    LAST    DECADE 


223 


ness  of  striving  to  extend  the  iron  frontiers  of  mor- 
tality. Lover,  poet,  soldier,  statist  have  each  contrib- 
uted a  part  of  their  lives  to  prolong  and  enrich  the 
saint's :  but  their  fresh  idealisms  have  withered  when 
grafted  upon  his  sober  and  sapless  brains-while  his 
own  garnered  wisdom  fares  no  better  wnen  committed 
to  the  crude  enthusiasm  of  his  disciples.  But  twice, 
in  this  volume,  a  richer  and  fuller  music  sounds.  In 
the  great  poem  of  Ixion,  human  illusions  are  still  the 
preoccupying  thought ;  but  they  appear  as  fetters,  not 
as  specious  masks,  and  instead  of  the  serio-comic  ex- 
posure of  humanity  we  see  its  tragic  and  heroic  de- 
liverance. Ixion  is  Browning's  Prometheus.  The 
song  that  breaks  from  his  lips  as  he  whirls  upon  the 
penal  wheel  of  Zeus  is  a  great  liberating  cry  of  de- 
fiance to  the  phantom-god — man's  creature  and  his 
ape — who  may  plunge  the  body  in  torments  but  can 
never  so  baffle  the  soul  but  that 

"  From  the  tears  and  sweat  and  blood  of  his  torment 
Out  of  the  wreck  he  rises  past  Zeus  to  the  Potency  o'er  him, 
Pallid  birth  of  my  pain— where  light,  where  light  is,  aspiring, 
Thither  I  rise,  whilst  thou— Zeus  take  thy  godship  and  sink." 

And  in  Never  the  Time  and  the  Place,  the  pang  of 
love's  aching  void  and  the  rapture  of  reunion  blend  in 
one  strain  of  haunting  magical  beauty,  the  song  of  an 
old  man  in  whom  one  memory  kindles  eternal 
youth,  a  song  in  which,  as  in  hardly  another,  the 
wistfulness  of  autumn  blends  with  the  plenitude  of 
spring. 

Browning   spent  the   summer  months  of  1883  at 


224  BROWNING 

Gressoney  St.  Jean,  a  lonely  spot  high  up  in  the  Val 
d'Aosta,  living,  as  usual  when  abroad,  on  the  plainest 
of  vegetable  diet.  "  Delightful  Gressoney  ! "  he 
wrote, 

"  Who  laughest, '  Take  what  is,  trust  what  may  be  ! '  " 

And  a  mood  of  serene  acquiescence  in  keeping  with 
the  scene  breathes  from  the  poem  which  occupied 
him  during  this  pleasant  summer.  To  Browning's 
old  age,  as  to  Goethe's,  the  calm  wisdom  and  graceful 
symbolism  of  Persia  offered  a  peculiar  attraction.  In 
the  Westostlicher  Divan,  seventy  years  earlier,  Goethe, 
with  a  subtler  sympathy,  laid  his  ringer  upon  the 
common  germs  of  Eastern  and  Western  thought  and 
poetry.  Browning,  far  less  in  actual  touch  with  the 
Oriental  mind,  turned  to  the  East  in  quest  of  pic- 
turesque habiliments  for  his  very  definitely  European 
convictions — "  Persian  garments,"  which  had  to  be 
"  changed  "  in  the  mind  of  the  interpreting  reader. 

The  Fancies  have  the  virtues  of  good  fables, — 
pithy  wisdom,  ingenious  moral  instances,  homely 
illustrations,  easy  colloquial  dialogue ;  and  the  ethical 
teaching  has  a  striking  superficial  likeness  to  the 
common-sense  morality  of  prudence  and  content, 
which  fables,  like  proverbs,  habitually  expound. 
"  Cultivate  your  garden,  don't  trouble  your  head 
about  insoluble  riddles,  accept  your  ignorance  and 
your  limitations,  assume  your  good  to  be  good  and 
your  evil  to  be  evil,  be  a  man  and  nothing  more  " — 
such  is  the  recurring  burden  of  Ferishtah's  counsel. 
But  such  preaching  on  Browning's  lips  always  carried 


THE    LAST    DECADE  225 

with  it  an  implicit  assumption  that  the  preacher  had 
himself  somehow  got  outside  the  human  limitations 
he  insisted  on ;  that  he  could  measure  the  plausibility 
of  man's  metaphysics  and  theology,  and  distinguish 
between  the  anthropomorphism  which  is  to  be 
acquiesced  in  because  we  know  no  better,  and  that 
which  is  to  be  spurned  because  we  know  too  much. 
Ferishtah's  thought  is  a  game  of  hide-and-seek,  and 
its  movements  have  all  the  dexterity  of  winding  and 
subterfuge  proper  to  success  in  that  game.  Against 
the  vindictive  God  of  the  creeds  he  trusts  his  human 
assurance  that  pain  is  God's  instrument  to  educate  us 
into  pity  and  love  ;  but  when  it  is  asked  how  a  just 
God  can  single  out  sundry  fellow-mortals 

"  To  undergo  experience  for  our  sake, 
Just  that  the  gift  of  pain,  bestowed  on  them, 
In  us  might  temper  to  the  due  degree 
Joy's  else-excessive  largess," — 

instead  of  admitting  a  like  appeal  to  the  same  human 
assurance,  he  falls  back  upon  the  unfathomable  ways 
of  Omnipotence.  If  the  rifts  in  the  argument  are  in 
any  sense  supplied,  it  is  by  the  brief  snatches  of  song 
which  intervene  between  the  Fancies,  as  the  cicada- 
note  filled  the  pauses  of  the  broken  string.  These 
exquisite  lyrics  are  much  more  adequate  expressions 
of  Browning's  faith  than  the  dialogues  which  pro- 
fessedly embody  it.  They  transfer  the  discussion 
from  the  jangle  of  the  schools  and  the  cavils  of  the 
market-place  to  the  passionate  persuasions  of  the 
heart  and  the  intimate  experiences  of  love,  in  which 


226  BROWNING 

all  Browning's  mysticism  had  its  root.  Thus 
Ferishtah's  pragmatic,  almost  philistine,  doctrine  of 
"  Plot-culture,"  by  which  human  life  is  peremptorily 
walled  in  within  its  narrow  round  of  tasks,  "  minute- 
ness severed  from  immensity,"  is  followed  by  the 
lyric  which  tells  how  Love  transcends  those  limits, 
making  an  eternity  of  time  and  a  universe  of  solitude. 
Finally,  the  burden  of  these  wayward  intermittent 
strains  of  love-music  is  caught  up,  with  an  added 
intensity  drawn  from  the  poet's  personal  love  and 
sorrow,  in  the  noble  Epilogue.  As  he  listens  to  the 
call  of  Love,  the  world  becomes  an  enchanted  place, 
resounding  with  the  triumph  of  good  and  the  ex- 
ultant battle-joy  of  heroes.  But  a  "  chill  wind " 
suddenly  disencharms  the  enchantment,  a  doubt  that 
buoyant  faith  might  be  a  mirage  conjured  up  by  Love 
itself: — 

"  What  if  all  be  error, 
If  the  halo  irised  round  my  head  were — Love,  thine  arms  ?  " 

He  disdains  to  answer ;  for  the  last  words  glow  with 
a  fire  which  of  itself  dispels  the  chill  wind.  A  faith 
founded  upon  love  had  for  Browning  a  surer 
guarantee  than  any  founded  upon  reason ;  it  was 
secured  by  that  which  most  nearly  emancipated 
men  from  the  illusions  of  mortality,  and  enabled 
them  to  see  things  as  they  are  seen  by  God. 

The  Parleyings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in 
their  Day  (1887)  1S  a  more  laboured  and,  save  for  one 
or  two  splendid  episodes,  a  less  remarkable  achieve- 
ment than  Ferishtah.     All  the  burly  diffuseness  which 


THE    LAST    DECADE  227 

had  there  been  held  in  check  by  a  quasi-oriental  ideal 
of  lightly-knit  facility  and  bland  oracular  pithiness, 
here  has  its  way  without  stint,  and  no  more  songs 
break  like  the  rush  of  birds'  wings  upon  the  dusty  air 
of  colloquy.  Thrusting  in  between  the  lyrics  of 
Ferishtab  and  Asolando,  these  Parleyings  recall  those 
other  "  people  of  importance  "  whose  intrusive  visit 
broke  in  upon  "  the  tenderness  of  Dante."  Neither 
their  importance  in  their  own  day  nor  their  relative 
obscurity,  for  the  most  part,  in  ours,  had  much  to  do 
with  Browning's  choice.  They  do  not  •  illustrate 
merely  his  normal  interest  in  the  obscure  freaks  and 
out-of-the-way  anomalies  of  history.  The  doings  of 
these  "  people "  had  once  been  u  important "  to 
Browning  himself,  and  the  old  man's  memory  sum- 
moned up  these  forgotten  old-world  friends  of  his 
boyhood  to  be  championed  or  rallied  by  their  quondam 
disciple.  The  death  of  the  dearest  friend  of  his 
later  life,  J.  Milsand,  in  1886,  probably  set  these 
chords  vibrating ;  the  book  is  dedicated  to  his 
memory.  Perhaps  the  Imaginary  Conversations  of  an 
older  friend  and  master  of  Browning's,  one  even 
more  important  in  Browning's  day  and  in  ours  than 
in  his  own,  and  the  master  of  his  youth,  once  more 
suggested  the  scheme.  But  these  Parleyings  are  con- 
versations only  in  name.  They  are  not  even  mono- 
logues of  the  old  brilliantly  dramatic  kind.  All  the 
dramatic  zest  of  converse  is  gone,  the  personages  are 
the  merest  shadows,  nothing  is  seen  but  the  old  poet 
haranguing  his  puppets  or  putting  voluble  expositions 
of  his  own  cherished  dogmas  into  their  wooden  lips. 


228  BROWNING 

We  have  glimpses  of  the  boy,  when  not  yet  able  to 
compass  an  octave,  beating  time  to  the  simple  but 
stirring  old  march  of  Avison  u  whilom  of  Newcastle 
organist " ;  and  before  he  has  done,  the  memory 
masters  him,  and  the  pedestrian  blank  verse  breaks 
into  a  hymn  u  rough,  rude,  robustious,  homely  heart 
athrob"  to  Pym  the  "man  of  men."  Or  he  calls 
up  Bernard  Mandeville  to  confute  the  formidable 
pessimism  of  his  old  friend  Carlyle — "  whose  groan  I 
hear,  with  guffaw  at  the  end  disposing  of  mock- 
melancholy  ."  Gerard  de  Lairesse,  whose  rococo 
landscapes  had  interested  him  as  a  boy,  he  introduces 
only  to  typify  an  outworn  way  of  art — the  mythic 
treatment  of  nature;  but  he  illustrates  this  u  inferior" 
way  with  a  splendour  of  poetry  that  makes  his  ironic 
exposure  dangerously  like  an  unwitting  vindication. 
These  visions  of  Prometheus  on  the  storm-swept  crag, 
of  Artemis  hunting  in  the  dawn,  show  that  Browning 
was  master,  if  he  had  cared  to  use  it,  of  that  magnif- 
icent symbolic  speech  elicited  from  Greek  myth  in 
the  Hyperion  or  the  Prometheus  Unbound.  But  it  was 
a  foreign  idiom  to  him,  and  his  occasional  use  of  it  a 
tour  de  force. 

Two  years  only  now  remained  for  Browning,  and  it 
began  to  be  apparent  to  his  friends  that  his  sturdy 
health  was  no  longer  secure.  His  way  of  life  under- 
went no  change,  he  was  as  active  in  society  as  eVer, 
and  acquaintances,  old  and  new,  still  claimed  his  tittle, 
and  added  to  the  burden,  always  cheerfully  .endured, 
of  his  correspondence.  In  October,  1887,  the  mamage 
of  his  son  attached  him  by  a  new  tie  to  Italy,  and  the 

m  *     - 


THE    LAST    DECADE  229 

Palazzo  Rezzonico  on  the  Grand  Canal,  where 
"  Pen  "  and  his  young  American  wife  presently  settled, 
was  to  be  his  last,  as  it  was  his  most  magnificent, 
abode.  To  Venice  he  turned  his  steps  each  autumn 
of  these  last  two  years  ;  lingering  by  the  way  among 
the  mountains  or  in  the  beautiful  border  region  at  their 
feet.  It  was  thus  that,  in  the  early  autumn  of  1889, 
he  came  yet  once  again  to  Asolo.  His  old  friend  and 
hostess,  Mrs.  Arthur  Bronson,  had  discovered  a  pleas- 
ant, airy  abode  on  the  old  town-wall,  overhanging  a 
ravine,  and  Asolo,  seen  from  this  "  castle  precipice-en- 
curled,"  recovered  all  its  old  magic.  It  was  here  that 
he  put  together  the  disconnected  pieces,  many  written 
during  the  last  two  years  in  London,  others  at  Asolo 
itself,  which  were  finally  published  on  the  day  of  his 
death.  The  Tower  of  Queen  Cornaro  still  overlooked 
the  little  town,  as  it  had  done  half  a  century  before ; 
and  he  attached  these  last  poems  to  the  same  tradition 
by  giving  them  the  pleasant  title  said  to  have  been  in- 
vented by  her  secretary.  Asolando — Facts  and  Fan- 
cies, both  titles  contain  a  hint  of  the  ageing  Browning, 
— the  relaxed  physical  energy  which  allows  this  strenu- 
ous waker  to  dream  (Reverie  ;  Bad  Dreams)  ;  the  flag- 
ging poetic  power,  whose  fitful  flashes  could  no  longer 
transfigure  the  world  for  him,  but  only  cast  a  fantastic 
flicker  at  moments  across  its  prosaic  features.  The 
opening  lines  sadly  confess  the  wane  of  the  old  vision  :  — 

"  And  now  a  flower  is  just  a  flower : 

Man,  bird,  beast  are  but  beast,  bird,  man  — 

Simply  themselves,  uncinct  by  dower 
Of  dyes  which,  when  life's  day  began, 

Round  each  in  glory  ran." 


23O  BROWNING 

The  famous  Epilogue  is  the  last  cheer  of  an  old 
warrior  in  whom  the  stout  fibre  of  heroism  still  held  out 
when  the  finer  nerve  of  vision  decayed  ;  but  J  Reverie 
shows  how  heavy  a  strain  it  had  to  endure  in  sustain- 
ing his  faith  that  the  world  is  governed  by  Love.  Of 
outward  evidence  for  that  conviction  Browning  saw 
less  and  less.  But  age  had  not  dimmed  his  inner  wit- 
ness, and  those  subtle  filaments  of  mysterious  affinity 
which,  for  Browning,  bound  the  love  of  God  for  man 
to  the  love  of  man  for  woman,  remained  unimpaired. 
The  old  man  of  seventy-seven  was  still,  in  his  last 
autumn,  singing  songs  redolent,  not  of  autumn,  but  of 
the  perfume  and  the  ecstasy  of  spring  and  youth, — 
love-lyrics  so  illusively  youthful  that  one,  not  the  least 
competent,  of  his  critics  has  refused  to  accept  them  as 
work  of  his  old  age.  Yet  Now  and  Summicm  Bonum, 
and  A  Pearl,  a  Girl,  with  all  their  apparent  freshness 
and  spontaneity,  are  less  like  rapt  utterances  of  passion 
than  eloquent  analyses  of  it  by  one  who  has  known  it 
and  who  still  vibrates  with  the  memory.  What  pre- 
occupies and  absorbs  him  is  not  the  woman,  but  the 
wonder  of  the  transfiguration  wrought  for  him  by  her 
word  or  kiss, — the  moment,  made  eternal,  the  "  blaze  " 
in  which  he  became  u  lord  of  heaven  and  earth."  But 
some  of  the  greatest  love-poetry  of  the  world — from 
Dante  onwards — has  reflected  an  intellect  similarly 
absorbed  in  articulating  a  marvellous  experience.  For 
the  rest,  Asolando  is  a  miscellany  of  old  and  new, — 
bright  loose  drift  from  the  chance  moods  of  genius,  or 
bits  of  anecdotic  lumber  carefully  recovered  and  refur- 
bished, as  in  prescience  of  the  nearing  end. 


THE    LAST    DECADE  23 1 

Yet  no  such  prescience  appears  to  have  been  his. 
His  buoyant  confidence  in  his  own  vitality  held  its 
own.  He  was  full  of  schemes  of  work.  At  the  end 
of  October  the  idyllic  days  at  Asolo  ended,  and 
Browning  repaired  for  the  last  time  to  the  Palazzo 
Rezzonico.  A  month  later  he  caught  a  bronchial 
catarrh ;  failure  of  the  heart  set  in,  and  on  the  even- 
ing of  December  12  he  peacefully  died.  On  the 
last  day  of  the  year  his  body  was  laid  to  rest  in  u  Poets' 
Corner." 


PART    II 
BROWNING'S  MIND  AND  ART 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    POET 

Then,  who  helps  more,  pray,  to  repair  our  loss  — 
Another  Boehme  with  a  tougher  book 
And  subtler  meanings  of  what  roses  say,  — 
Or  some  stout  Mage,  like  him  of  Halberstadt, 
John,  who  made  things  Boehme  wrote  thoughts  about  ? 
He  with  a  "  look  you !  "  vents  a  brace  of  rhymes, 
And  in  there  breaks  the  sudden  rose  herself, 
*  ♦  *  *  * 

/    Buries  us  with  a  glory,  young  once  more, 

Pouring  heaven  into  this  shut  house  of  life. 
\  — Transcendentalism. 

I 

"  I  have,  you  are  to  know,"  Browning  once  wrote  to 
Miss  Haworth,  "  such  a  love  for  flowers  and  leaves 
.  .  .  that  I  every  now  and  then  in  an  impatience  at 
being  unable  to  possess  them  thoroughly,  to  see  them 
quite,  satiate  myself  with  their  scent, — bite  them  to 
bits."  "  All  poetry ,"  he  wrote  some  twenty  years 
later  to  Ruskin,  "  is  the  problem  of  putting  the  infi- 
nite into  the  finite."  Utterances  like  these,  not  con- 
veyed through  the  lips  of  some  "  dramatic  "  creation, 
but  written  seriously  in  his  own  person  to  intimate 
friends,  give  us  a  clue  more  valuable  it  may  be  than 
some  other  utterances  which  are  oftener  quoted  and 
better  known,  to  the  germinal  impulses  of  Brown- 
ing's   poetic  work.     "  Finite  "  and  "  infinite  "  were 

235 


236  BROWNING 

words  continually  on  his  lips,  and  it  is  clear  that  both 
sides  of  the  antithesis  represented  instincts  rooted  in 
his  mental  nature,  drawing  nourishment  from  distinct 
but  equally  fundamental  springs  of  feeling  and  thought. 
Each  had  its  stronghold  in  a  particular  psychical  re- 
gion. The  province  and  feeding-ground  of  his  pas- 
sion for  u  infinity  "  was  that  eager  and  restless  self- 
consciousness  which  he  so  vividly  described  in  Paul- 
ine^  seeking  to  "  be  all,  have,  see,  know,  taste,  feel 
all,"  to  become  all  natures,  like  Sordello,  yet  retain  the 
law  of  his  own  being.  u  I  pluck  the  rose  and  love  it 
more  than  tongue  can  speak,"  says  the  lover  in  Two 
in  the  Campagna.  Browning  had  his  full  portion  of 
the  romantic  idealism  which,  under  the  twofold  stimu- 
lus of  literary  and  political  revolution,  had  animated 
the  poetry  of  the  previous  generation.  But  while  he 
clearly  shared  the  uplifted  aspiring  spirit  of  Shelley,  it 
assumed  in  him  a  totally  different  character.  Shelley 
abhors  limits,everything  grows  evanescent  and  aethereal 
before  his  solvent  imagination,  the  infinity  he  aspires 
after  unveils  itself  at  his  bidding,  impalpable,  unde- 
fined, "  intense,"  "  inane."  Whereas  Browning's 
restlessly  aspiring  temperament  worked  under  the  con- 
trol of  an  eye  and  ear  that  fastened  with  peculiar  em- 
phasis and  eagerness  upon  all  the  limits,  the  disso- 
nances, the  angularities  that  Shelley's  harmonising 
fancy  dissolved  away.  The  ultimate  psychological 
result  was  that  the  brilliant  clarity  and  precision  of  his 
imagined  forms  gathered  richness  and  intensity  of  sug- 
gestion from  the  vaguer  impulses  of  temperament, 
and  that  an  association  was  set  up  between  them  which 


THE    POET 


237 


makes  it  literally  true  to  say  that,  for  Browning,  the^x. 
u  finite  "  is  not  the  rival  or  the  antithesis,  but  the  very 
language  of  the  "  infinite," — that  the  vastest  and  most 
transcendent  realities  have  for  him  their  points  cT  appui 
in  some  bit  of  intense  life,  some  darting  bird  or  insect, 
some  glowing  flower  or  leaf.  Existence  ebbs  away 
from  the  large,  featureless,  monotonous  things,  to 
concentrate  itself  in  a  spiked  cypress  or  a  jagged 
mountain  cleft.  A  placid  soul  without  "  incidents  " 
arrests  him  less  surely  than  the  fireflies  on  a  mossy 
bank.  Hence,  while  u  the  finite "  always  appears, 
when  explicitly  contrasted  with  "  the  infinite,"  as  the 
inferior, — as  something  sot-disant  imperfect  and  in- 
complete,— its  actual  status  and  function  in  Brown- 
ing's imaginative  world  rather  resembles  that  of  Plato's 
TT^oct?  in  relation  to  the  aneipov, — the  saving  "limit" 
which  gives  definite  existence  to  the  limitless  vague. 


II 

Hence  Browning,  while  a  romantic  in  temper,  was, 
in  comparison  with  his  predecessors,  a  thorough  realist 
in  method.  All  the  Romantic  poets  of  the  previous 
generation  had  refused  and  decried  some  large  portion 
of  reality.  Wordsworth  had  averted  his  ken  from 
half  of  human  fate ;  Keats  and  Shelley  turned  from 
the  forlornness  of  human  society  as  it  was  to  the 
transfigured  humanity  of  myth.  All  three  were  out 
of  sympathy  with  civilisation ;  and  their  revolt  went 
much  deeper  than  a  distaste  for  the  types  of  men  it 
bred.     They  attacked  a  triumphant  age  of  reason  in 


238  BROWNING 

its  central  fastness,  the  brilliant  analytic  intelligence 
to  which  its  triumphs  were  apparently  due.  Keats 
declaimed  at  cold  philosophy  which  undid  the  rain- 
bow's spells ;  Shelley  repelled  the  claim  of  mere  un- 
derstanding to  settle  the  merits  of  poetry ;  Words- 
worth, the  profoundest,  though  by  no  means  the  most 
cogent  or  connected,  thinker  of  the  three,  denounced 
the  "  meddling  intellect "  which  murders  to  dissect, 
and  strove  to  strip  language  itself  of  every  element 
of  logic  and  fancy,  as  distortions  of  the  truth,  only  to 
be  uttered  in  the  barest  words,  which  comes  to  the 
heart  that  watches  and  receives.  On  all  these  issues 
Browning  stands  in  sharp,  if  not  quite  absolute,  con- 
trast. "  Barbarian,"  as  he  has  been  called,  and  as  in 
a  quite  intelligible  sense  he  was,  he  found  his  poetry 
pre-eminently  among  the  pursuits,  the  passions,  the 
interests  and  problems,  of  civilised  men.  His  potent 
gift  of  imagination  never  tempted  him,  during  his 
creative  years,  to  assail  the  sufficiency  of  intellect,  or 
to  disparage  the  intellectual  and  "  artificial "  elements 
of  speech;  on  the  contrary,  he  appears  from  the  out- 
set employing  in  the  service  of  poetry  a  discursive 
logic  of  unsurpassed  swiftness  and  dexterity,  and  a 
vast  heterogeneous  army  of  words  gathered,  like  a 
sudden  levy,  with  a  sole  eye  to  their  effective  force, 
from  every  corner  of  civilised  life,  and  wearing  the 
motley  of  the  most  prosaic  occupations.  It  was  only 
in  the  closing  years  that  he  began  to  distrust  the  power 
of  thought  to  get  a  grip  upon  reality.  His  delight  in 
poetic  argument  is  often  doubtless  that  of  the  ironical 
casuist,  looking   on  at  the  self-deceptions  of  a  soul ; 


THE    POET  239 

but  his  interest  in  ideas  was  a  rooted  passion  that  gave 
a  thoroughly  new,  and  to  many  readers  most  unwel- 
come, "  intellectuality  "  to  the  whole  manner  as  well 
as  substance  of  his  poetic  work. 

While  Browning  thus,  in  Nietzsche's  phrase,  said 
"Yes"  to  many  sides  of  existence  which  his  Ro- 
mantic predecessors  repudiated  or  ignored,  he  had 
some  very  definite  limitations  of  his  own.  He  gath- 
ered into  his  verse  crowded  regions  of  experience 
which  they  neglected ;  but  some  very  glorious  ave- 
nues of  poetry  pursued  by  them  he  refused  to  explore. 
Himself  the  most  ardent  believer  in  the  supernatural 
among  all  the  great  poets  of  his  time,  the  supernatural, 
as  such,  has  hardly  any  explicit  place  in  his  poetry. 
To  the  eternal  beauty  of  myth  and  folk-lore, — dream- 
palaces  "  never  built  at  all  and  therefore  built  for- 
ever,"— all  that  province  of  the  poetical  realm  which 
in  the  memorable  partition  of  1797  Coleridge  had 
taken  for  his  own,  splendidly  emulated  by  Shelley  and 
by  Keats,  Browning  the  Platonist  maintained  on  the 
whole  the  attitude  of  the  utilitarian  man  of  facts. 
"  Fairy-poetry,"  he  agreed  with  Elizabeth  Barrett  in 
1845-46,  was  "impossible  in  the  days  of  steam." 
With  a  faith  in  a  transcendent  divine  world  as  assured 
as  Dante's  or  Milton's,  he  did  not  aspire  to  "  pass  the 
flaming  bounds  of  Space  or  Time,"  or  "  to  possess  the 
sun  and  stars."  No  reader  of  Gerard  de  Lairesse  at 
one  end  of  his  career,  or  of  the  vision  of  Paracelsus 
at  the  other,  or  Childe  Roland  in  the  middle,  can  mis- 
take the  capacity ;  but  habit  is  more  trustworthy  than 
an  occasional  tour  de  force  ;  and  Browning's  imagina- 


24O  BROWNING 

tion  worked  freely  only  when  it  bodied  forth  a  life  in 
accord  with  the  waking  experience  of  his  own  day. 
"A  poet  never  dreams/'  said  his  philosophical  Don 
Juan,  "  we  prose  folk  always  do  " ;  and  the  epigram 
brilliantly  announced  the  character  of  Browning's 
poetic  world, — the  world  of  prose  illuminated  through 
and  through  in  every  cranny  and  crevice  by  the  keen- 
est and  most  adventurous  of  exploring  intellects. 

In  physical  organisation  Browning's  endowment 
was  decidedly  of  the  kind  which  prompts  men  to 
"  accept  the  universe  "  with  joyful  alacrity.  Like  his 
contemporary  Victor  Hugo,  he  was,  after  all  reserves 
have  been  made,  from  first  to  last  one  of  the  healthiest 
and  heartiest  of  men.  If  he  lacked  the  burly  stature 
and  bovine  appetite  with  which  young  Hugo  a  little 
scandalised  the  delicate  sensibilities  of  French  Ro- 
manticism, he  certainly  u  came  eating  and  drinking," 
and  amply  equipped  with  nerve  and  muscle,  activity, 
accomplishment,  social  instinct,  and  savoir  faire. 
The  isolating  loneliness  of  genius  was  checkmated 
by  a  profusion  of  the  talents  which  put  men  en  rap- 
port with  their  kind.  The  reader  of  his  biography  is 
apt  to  miss  in  it  the  signs  of  that  heroic  or  idealist 
detachment  which  he  was  never  weary  of  extolling  in 
his  verse.  He  is  the  poet  par  excellence  of  the  glory  of 
failure  and  dissatisfaction ;  but  this  life  was,  in  the 
main,  that  of  one  who  succeeded  and  who  was  satis- 
fied with  his  success.  In  the  vast  bulk  of  his  writings 
we  look  in  vain  for  the  "  broken  arc,"  the  "  half-told 
tale,"  and  it  is  characteristic  that  he  never  revised. 
Even  after  the  great  sorrow  of  his  life,  the  mood  of 


THE    POET  24I 

Prospice^  though  it  may  have  underlain  all  his  other 
moods,  did  not  suppress  or  transform  them ;  he 
u  lived  in  the  world  and  loved  earth's  way,"  and  how- 
ever assured  that  this  earth  is  not  his  only  sphere,  did 
not  wish 


"  the  wings  unfurled 
That  sleep  in  the  worm,  they  say. 


Whatever  affinities  Browning  may  have  with  the 
mystic  or  the  symbolist  for  whom  the  whole  sense- 
world  is  but  the  sign  of  spiritual  realities,  it  is  plain 
that  this  way  of  envisaging  existence  found  little  sup- 
port in  the  character  of  his  senses.  He  had  not  the 
broodingeye,  beneath  which,  as  it  gazes,  loveliness 
becomes  far  lovelier,  but  an  organ  aggressively  alert, 
minutely  inquisitive,  circumstantially  exact,  which 
perceived  the  bearings  of  things,  and  explored  their 
intricacies,  noted  how  the  mortar  was  tempered  in  the 
walls  and  if  any  struck  a  woman  or  beat  a  horse,  but 
was  as  little  prone  to  Transfigure  these  or  other  things 
with  the  glamour  of  mysterious  suggestion  as  the  eye 
of  Peter  Bell  himself.  He  lacked  the  stranger  and 
subtler  sensibilities  of  eye  and  ear,  to  which  Nature 
poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century  owes  so  much.  His 
senses  were  efficient  servants  to  an  active  brain,  not 
magicians  flinging  dazzling  spells  into  the  air  before 
him  or  mysterious  music  across  his  path.  By  a  curi- 
ous and  not  unimportant  peculiarity  he  could  see  a 
remote  horizon  clearly  with  one  eye,  and  read  the 
finest  print  in  twilight  with  the  other ;  but  he  could 
not,  like  Wordsworth,  hear  the  "  sound  of  alien  mel- 


242  BROWNING 

ancholy"  given  out  from  the  mountains  before  a 
storm.  The  implicit  realism  of  his  eye  and  ear  was 
fortified  by  acute  tactual  and  muscular  sensibilities. 
He  makes  us  vividly  aware  of  surface  and  texture,  of 
space,  solidity,  shape.  Matter  with  him  is  not  the 
translucent,  tenuous,  half-spiritual  substance  of  Shel- 
ley, but  aggressively  massive  and  opaque,  tense  with 
solidity.  And  he  had  in  an  eminent  degree  the  quick 
and  eager  apprehension  of  space-relations  which  usu- 
ally goes  with  these  developed  sensibilities  of  eye  and 
muscle.  There  is  a  hint  of  it  in  an  early  anecdote. 
"  Why,  sir,  you  are  quite  a  geographer !  "  he  reported 
his  mother  to  have  said  to  him  when,  on  his  very  first 
walk  with  her,  he  had  given  her  an  elaborate  imaginary 
account  of  u  his  houses  and  estates."  1  But  it  was 
only  late  in  life  that  this  acute  plasticity  and  concrete- 
ness  of  his  sensibility  found  its  natural  outlet.  When 
in  their  last  winter  at  Rome  (i  860-61)  he  took  to 
clay-modelling,  it  was  with  an  exultant  rapture  which 
for  the  time  thrust  poetry  into  the  shade.  "The 
more  tired  he  has  been,  and  the  more  his  back  ached, 
poor  fellow,"  writes  his  wife,  u  the  more  he  has  ex- 
ulted and  been  happy — no,  nothing  ever  made  him  so 
happy  before."2  fThis  was  the  immense  joy  of  one 
who  has  at  length  found  the  key  after  half  a  lifetime 
of  trying  at  the  lock.J 

1  Mrs.  Orr,  Life,  p.  24. 

2  Mrs.  Browning's  Letters,  March,  1861. 


THE    POET 


243 


III 

And  yet  realism  as  commonly  understood  is  a  mis- 
leading term  for  Browning's  art.  If  his  keen  objec- 
tive senses  penned  his  imagination,  save  for  a  few 
daring  escapades,  within  the  limits  of  a  somewhat 
normal  actuality,  it  exercised,  within  those  limits,  a 
superb  individuality  of  choice.  The  acute  observer 
was  doubled  with  a  poet  whose  vehement  and  fiery 
energy  and  intense  self-consciousness  influenced  what 
he  observed,  and  yet  far  more  what  he  imagined  and 
what  he  expressed.  It  is  possible  to  distinguish  four 
main  lines  along  which  this  determining  bias  told. 
He  gloried  in  the  strong  sensory-stimulus  of  glowing 
colour,  of  dazzling  light ;  in  the  more  complex  motory- 
stimulus  of  intricate,  abrupt,  and  plastic  form, — feasts 
for  the  agile  eye ;  in  all  the  signs  of  power,  exciting 
a  kindred  joy  by  sympathy ;  and  in  all  the  signs  of 
conscious  life  or  "  soul,"  exciting  a  joy  which  only 
reaches  its  height  when  it  is  enforced  by  those  more 
elemental  and  primitive  springs  of  joy,  when  he  is 
engaged  with  souls  that  glow  like  a  flower  or  a  gem, 
with  souls  picturesquely  complex  and  diversified,  or 
vehement,  aspiring,  heroic.  In  each  of  those  four 
domains,  light  and  colour,  form,  power,  soul,  Brown- 
ing had  a  profound,  and  in  the  fullest  sense  creative, 
joy,  which  in  endless  varieties  and  combinations 
dominated  his  imagination,  controlled  and  pointed  its 
flight,  and  determined  the  contents,  the  manner,  and 
the  atmosphere  of  his  poetic  work.  To  trace  these 
operations  in  detail  will  be  the  occupation  of  the  five 
following  sections. 


244  BROWNING 

IV 

i.     Joy  in  Light  and  Colour 

Browning's  repute  as  a  thinker  and  "  teacher  "  long 
overshadowed  his  glory  as  a  singer,  and  it  still  to  some 
extent  impedes  the  recognition  of  his  bold  and  splen- 
did colouring.  It  is  true  that  he  is  never  a  colourist 
pure  and  simple ;  his  joy  in  light  and  colour  is  never 
merely  epicurean.  Poets  so  great  as  Keats  often  seem 
to  sit  as  luxurious  guests  at  their  own  feasts  of  sense ; 
Browning  has  rather  the  air  of  a  magnificent  dispenser, 
who  "  provides  and  not  partakes."  His  colouring  is 
not  subtle ;  it  recalls  neither  the  aethereal  opal  of 
Shelley  nor  the  dewy  flushing  glow  and  "  verdurous 
glooms  "  of  Keats,  nor  the  choice  and  cultured  splen- 
dour of  Tennyson ;  it  is  bold,  simple,  and  intense. 
He  neglects  the  indecisive  and  subdued  tones;  the 
mingled  hues  chiefly  found  in  Nature,  or  the  tender 
"  silvery-grey  "  of  Andrea's  placid  perfection.  He 
dazzles  us  with  scarlet  and  crimson ;  with  rubies,  and 
blood,  and  "  the  poppy's  red  effrontery,"  with  topaz, 
and  amethyst,  and  the  glory  of  gold,  makes  the  sense 
ache  with  the  lustre  of  blue,  and  heightens  the  effect 
of  all  by  the  boldest  contrast.  Who  can  doubt  that 
he  fell  the  more  readily  upon  one  of  his  quaintest 
titles  because  of  the  priestly  ordinance  that  the 
"  Pomegranates  "  were  to  be  "  of  blue  and  of  purple 
and  of  scarlet,"  and  the  "  Bells  "  "  of  gold  "  ?  He 
loves  the  daybreak  hour  of  the  world's  awakening 
vitality  as  poets  of  another  temper  love  the  twilight ; 
the  splendour  of  sunrise  pouring  into  the  chamber  of 


THE    POET  245 

Pippa,  and  steeping  Florence  in  that  "  live  translucent 
bath  of  air  "  5 '  he  loves  the  blaze  of  the  Italian  mid- 
day— 

"  Great  noontides,  thunder-storms,  all  glaring  pomps 
That  triumph  at  the  heels  of  June  the  god." 

Even  a  violet-bed  he  sees  as  a  "flash"  of  "blue." 2 
He  loves  the  play  of  light  on  golden  hair,  and  rarely 
imagines  womanhood  without  it,  even  in  the  sombre 
South  and  the  dusky  East ;  Porphyria  and  Lady  Car- 
lisle, Evelyn  Hope  and  the  maid  of  Pornic,  share  the 
gift  with  Anael  the  Druse,  with  Sordello's  Palma, 
whose 

"  tresses  curled 
Into  a  sumptuous  swell  of  gold,  and  wound 
About  her  like  a  glory !  even  the  ground 
Was  bright  as  with  spilt  sunbeams ; " 

and  the  girl  in  Love  among  the  Ruins,  and  the  u  dear 
dead  women  "  of  Venice.  His  love  of  fire  and  of  the 
imagery  of  flame  has  one  of  its  sources  in  his  love  of 
light.  Verona  emerges  from  the  gloom  of  the  past  as 
"a  darkness  kindling  at  the  core."  He  sees  the 
u  pink  perfection  of  the  cyclamen,"  the  "  rose  bloom 
o'er  the  summit's  front  of  stone."  And,  like  most 
painters  of  the  glow  of  light,  he  throws  a  peculiar  in- 
tensity into  his  glooms.  When  he  paints  a  dark  night, 
as  in  Pan  and  Luna,  the  blackness  is  a  solid  jelly-like 

1 "  I  never  grow  tired  of  sunrises,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter,  recently 
published*  to  Aubrey  de  Vere,  in  1851  {A.  de  Vere:  A  Memoir,  by 
Wilfrid  Ward). 

3  Two  Poets  of  Croisic. 


246  BROWNING 

thing  that  can  be  cut.  And  even  night  itself  falls 
short  of  the  pitchy  gloom  that  precedes  the  Eastern 
vision,  breaking  in  despair  "  against  the  soul  of  black- 
ness there,"  as  the  gloom  of  Saul's  tent  discovers 
within  it  u  a  something  more  black  than  the  blackness," 
the  sustaining  tent-pole,  and  then  Saul  himself "  gi- 
gantic and  blackest  of  all." 

But  mostly  the  foil  is  a  vivid,  even  strident,  con- 
trast. He  sees  the  "  old  June  weather  "  blue  above, 
and  the 

"  great  opaque 
Blue  breadth  of  sea  without  a  break  " 

under  the  walls  of  the  seaside  palazzo  in  Southern 
Italy,  "  where  the  baked  cicala  dies  of  drouth  " ;  and 
the  blue  lilies  about  the  harp  of  golden-haired  David  ; 
and  Solomon  gold-robed  in  the  blue  abyss  of  his  cedar 
house,  u  like  the  centre  spike  of  gold  which  burns 
deep  in  the  blue-bell's  womb  " ; *  and  the  "  gaze  of 
Apollo"  through  the  gloom  of  Verona  woods;2  he 
sees  the  American  pampas — "  miles  and  miles  of  gold 
and  green,"  "  where  the  sunflowers  blow  in  a  solid 
glow,"  with  a  horse — "  coal-black  " — careering  across 
it;  and  his  swarthy  Ethiop  uses  the  yellow  poison- 
wattles  of  a  lizard  to  divine  with.3  If  he  imagines 
the  "  hairy-gold  orbs  "  of  the  sorb-fruit,  they  must  be 
ensconced  in  "  black  glossy  myrtle-berries,"  foils  in 
texture  as  in  hue ; 4  and  he  neglects  the  mellow  har- 
monies of  autumnal  decay  in  order  to  paint  the  leaf 
which  is  like  a  splash  of  blood  intense,  abrupt,  across 
1  Popularity.  »  Sordello.  3  lb.  4  Englishman  in  Italy. 


THE    POET  247 

the  flame  of  a  golden  shield. *  He  makes  the  most  of 
every  hint  of  contrast  he  finds,  and  delights  in  images 
which  accentuate  the  rigour  of  antithesis  ;  Cleon's 
mingled  black  and  white  slaves  remind  him  of  a  tesse- 
lated  pavement,  and  Blougram's  fluctuating  faith  and 
doubt  of  a  chess-board.  And  when,  long  after  the 
tragic  break-up  of  his  Italian  home,  he  reverted  in 
thought  to  Miss  Blagden's  Florentine  garden,  the  one 
impression  that  sifted  itself  out  in  his  tell-tale  memory 
was  of  spots  of  colour  and  light  upon  dark  back- 
grounds,— "  the  herbs  in  red  flower,  and  the  butterflies 
on  the  top  of  the  wall  under  the  olive-trees."2 

Browning's  colouring  is  thus  strikingly  expressive 
of  the  build  of  his  mind,  as  sketched  above.  It  is  the 
colouring  of  a  realist  in  so  far  as  it  is  always  caught 
from  life,  and  never  fantastic  or  mythical.  But  it  is 
chosen  with  an  instinctive  and  peremptory  bias  of  eye 
and  imagination — the  index  of  a  mind  impatient  of 
indistinct  confusions  and  placid  harmony,  avid  of  in- 
tensity, decision,  and  conflict. 

V 

2.     Joy  in  Form 

If  the  popular  legend  of  Browning  ignores  his  pas- 
sion for  colour,  it  altogether  scouts  the  suggestion  that 
he  had  a  peculiar  delight  in  form.  By  general  con- 
sent he  lacked  the  most  ordinary  and  decent  attention 
to  it.     No  doubt  he  is  partly  responsible  for  this  im- 

1  By  the  Fireside. 

*  Mrs.  Orr,  Life,  p.  258. 


K 


248  BROWNING 

pression  himself.  His  ideals  of  literary  form  were 
not  altogether  those  commonly  recognised  in  liter- 
ature. If  we  understand  by  form  the  quality  of  clear- 
cut  outline  and  sharply  defined  articulation,  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  it  was  one  of  the  most  ingrained  in- 
stincts of  his  nature,  indulged  at  times  with  even  mor- 
bid excess.  Alike  in  life  and  in  art  he  hated  sloth, — 
\  the  slovenliness  of  the  "  ungirt  loin  "  and  of  the  in- 
decisive touch.  In  conduct,  this  animus  expressed 
itself  in  a  kind  of  punctilious  propriety.  The  forms 
of  social  convention  Browning  observed  not  merely 
with  the  scrupulous  respect  of  the  man  of  fashion, 
but  with  the  enthusiasm  of  the  virtuoso.  Near  akin 
in  genius  to  the  high  priests  of  the  Romantic  temple, 
Browning  rarely,  even  in  the  defiant  heyday  of  ado- 
lescence, set  more  than  a  tentative  foot  across  the 
outer  precincts  of  the  Romantic  Bohemia.  His  "  in- 
dividualism "  was  not  of  the  type  which  overflows  in 
easy  affectations ;  he  was  too  original  to  be  eccentric, 
too  profoundly  a  man  of  letters  to  look  "  like  a 
damned  literary  man."  In  his  poetry  this  animus 
took  a  less  equivocal  shape.  Not  a  little,  both  of  its 
vividness  and  of  its  obscurity,  flows  from  the  undis- 
ciplined exuberance  of  his  joy  in  form.  An  acute 
criticism  of  Mrs.  Browning's — in  some  points  the 
very  best  critic  he  ever  had — puts  one  aspect  of  this 
admirably.  The  Athenaum  had  called  him  u  misty." 
u  Misty,"  she  retorts,  "  is  an  infamous  word  for  your 
kind  of  obscurity.  You  never  are  misty,  not  even  in 
Sordello — never  vague.  Your  graver  cuts  deep  sharp 
lines,  always, — and  there  is  an  extra  distinctness  in 


THE    POET 


249 


your  images  and  thoughts,  from  the  midst  of  which, 
crossing  each  other  infinitely,  the  general  significance 
seems  to  escape."1  That  is  the  overplus  of  form 
producing  obscurity.  But  through  immense  tracts  of 
Browning  the  effect  of  the  extra-distinctness  of  his 
images  and  thoughts,  of  the  deep  sharp  lines  cut  by 
his  graver,  is  not  thus  frustrated,  but  tells  to  the  full 
in  amazingly  vivid  and  unforgettable  expression.  Yet 
he  is  no  more  a  realist  of  the  ordinary  type  here  than 
in  his  colouring.  His  deep  sharp  lines  are  caught 
from  life,  but  under  the  control  of  a  no  less  definite 
bias  of  eye  and  brain.  Sheer  nervous  and  muscular 
energy  had  its  part  here  also.  As  he  loved  the  intense 
colours  which  most  vigorously  stimulate  the  optic 
nerve,  so  he  delighted  in  the  angular,  indented,  inter- 
twining, labyrinthine  varieties  of  line  and  surface 
which  call  for  the  most  delicate,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  most  agile,  adjustments  of  the  muscles  of  the  eye. 
He  caught  at  the  edges  of  things — the  white  line  of 
foam  against  the  shore,  the  lip  of  the  shell,  and  he 
could  compare  whiteness  as  no  other  poet  ever  did  to 
"  the  bitten  lip  of  hate."  He  once  saw  with  delight 
"  a  solitary  bee  nipping  a  leaf  round  till  it  exactly 
fitted  the  front  of  a  hole."2  Browning's  joy  in  form 
was  as  little  epicurean  as  his  joy  in  colour;  it  was  a 
banquet  of  the  senses  in  which  the  sense  of  motion 
and  energy  had  the  largest  part.  Smooth,  flowing, 
rounded,  undulating  outlines,  which  the  eye  glides 
along  without  check,  are  insipid  and  profitless  to  him, 
and  he  "  welcomes  the  rebuff"  of  every  jagged  ex- 
*JB,  B.  to  R,  B.,  Jan.  19,  1846.  2  To  E.  B.  B.y  Jan.  5,  1846. 


250  BROWNING 

crescence  or  ragged  fray,  of  every  sudden  and  abrupt 
breach  of  continuity.  His  eye  seizes  the  crisp  inden- 
tations of  ferns  as  they  "  fit  their  teeth  to  the  polished 
block"  of  a  grey  boulder-stone;1  seizes  the  u  sharp- 
curled  "  olive-leaves  as  they  "  print  the  blue  sky  " 
above  the  morning  glories  of  Florence;2  seizes  the 
sharp  zigzag  of  lightning  against  the  Italian  midnight, 
the  fiery  west  through  a  dungeon  grating  or  a  lurid 
rift  in  the  clouds,3 — "  one  gloom,  a  rift  of  fire,  another 
gloom," — the  brilliant  line  of  Venice  suspended  u  be- 
tween blue  and  blue."  "  Cup-mosses  and  ferns  and 
spotty  yellow  leaves— all  that  I  love  heartily,"  he 
wrote  to  E.  B.  B.4  Roses  and  moss  strike  most 
men's  senses  by  a  soft  luxuriance  in  which  all  sharp 
articulation  of  parts  is  merged;  but  what  Browning 
seizes  on  in  the  rose  is  its  "  labyrinthine  "  intricacy, 
while  the  moss  becomes  a  little  forest  of  "  fairy-cups 
and  elf  needles."  And  who  else  would  have  thought 
of  saying  that  "the  fields  look  rough  with  hoary 
dew  "  ? 5  In  the  Easter-Day  vision  he  sees  the  sky  as 
a  network  of  black  serrated  ridges.  He  loves  the 
intricate  play  of  light  and  shade,  and  the  irregular, 
contorted,  honeycombed  surface  which  produces  it; 
craggy,  scarred,  indented  mountains,  "like  an  old 
lion's  cheek-teeth  " ; 6  old  towns  with  huddled  roofs 

1  By  the  Fireside.  8  Old  Pictures  in  Florence. 

3  Sordello,  i.  181. 

4  Jan.  5,  1846,  apropos  of  a  poem  by  Home.  The  "  love  "  may 
refer  to  Home's  description  of  these  things,  but  it  matters  little  for 
the  present  purpose. 

5  Home  Thoughts. 

6  Karshish,  i.  515.     Cf.  Englishman  in  Italy,  i.  397. 


THE    POET  251 

and  towers  picked  out  "  black  and  crooked,' '  like 
"  fretwork,"  or  "  Turkish  verse  along  a  scimitar  "  ; 
old  walls,  creviced  and  crannied,  intertwined  with 
creepers,  and  tenanted  by  crossing  swarms  of  ever- 
busy  flies, — such  things  are  the  familiar  commonplace 
of  Browning's  sculpturesque  fancy.  His  metrical 
movements  are  full^ofjhejame  joy  in  "  fretwork  " 
effects — verse-rhythm  and  sense-rhythm  constantly 
crossing  where  the  reader  expectsjhgm  to  coincide,* I 

Nor  was  his  imaginative  sculpture  confined  to  low- 
relief.  Every  rift  in  the  surface  catches  his  eye,  and 
the  deeper  and  more  intricate  the  recess,  the  more 
curiously  his  insinuating  fancy  explores  it.  Sordello's 
palace  is  "  a  maze  of  corridors," — "  dusk  winding 
stairs,  dim  galleries."  He  probes  the  depths  of  the 
flower-bell;  he  pries  after  the  warmth  and  scent  that 
lie  within  the  u loaded  curls"  of  his  lady,  and 
irradiates  the  lizard,  or  the  gnome,2  in  its  rock- 
chamber,  the  bee  in  its  amber  drop,3  or  in  its 
bud,4  the  worm  in  its  clod.  When  Keats  describes 
the  closed  eyes  of  the  sleeping  Madeline  he  is  con- 
tent with  the  loveliness  he  sees  : — 

"And  still  she  slept  an  azure-lidded  sleep." 

Browning's  mining  fancy  insists  on  showing  us  the 

1  Cf.,  e.  g.,  his  treatment  of  the  six-line  stanza. 

2  Sordello. 

'This  turn  of  fancy  was  one  of  his  points  of  affinity  with 
Uonne ;  cf.  R.  B.  to  E.  B.  B.,  i.  46 :  "  Music  should  enwrap  the 
thought,  as  Donne  says  an  amber  drop  enwraps  a  bee.' 

4  Porphyria. 


252  BROWNING 

eye  of  the  dead  Porphyria  "  ensconced  "  within  its 
eyelid,  "like  a  bee  in  a  bud.''  A  cleft  is  as  seductive 
to  his  imagination  as  a  cave  to  Shelley's.  In  a  cleft 
of  the  wind-gashed  Apennines  he  imagines  the  home 
he  would  best  love  in  all  the  world  jMn  a  cleft  the 
pine-tree,  symbol  of  hardy  song,2  strikes  precarious 
root,  the  ruined  eagle  finds  refuge,3  and  Sibrandus 
Schaffhaburgensis  a  watery  Inferno.  A  like  instinct 
allures  him  to  other  images  of  deep  hollow  things  the 
recesses  of  which  something  else  explores  and  oc- 
cupies,— the  image  of  the  sheath ;  the  image  of  the 
cup.  But  he  is  equally  allured  by  the  opposite,  or 
salient,  kind  of  angularity.  Beside  the  Calabrian 
seaside  house  stands  a  "  sharp  tree — a  cypress — 
rough  iron-spiked,  ripe  fruit  o'er-crusted," — in  all 
points  a  thoroughly  Browningesque  tree. 

And  so,  corresponding  to  the  cleft-like  array  of 
sheaths  and  cups,  a  not  less  prolific  family  of  spikes 
and  wedges  and  swords  runs  riot  in  Browning's  work. 
The  rushing  of  a  fresh  river-stream  into  the  warm 
ocean  tides  crystallises  into  the  "  crystal  spike  be- 
tween two  warm  walls  of  wave  ;  "  4  "  air  thickens," 
and  the  wind,  grown  solid,  "  edges  its  wedge  in  and 
in  as  far  as  the  point  would  go."5  The  fleecy  clouds 
embracing  the  flying  form  of  Luna  clasp  her  as  close 
"  as  dented  spine  fitting  its  flesh."  6  The  fiery  agony 
of  John  the  heretic  is  a  plucking  of  sharp  spikes  from 

1  Dibus  Guste.  *  Pan  and  Luna. 

3  E.  g.,  Balaustion 's  Adventure  ;  Proem. 

4  Caliban  on  Setebos.  hA  Lover's  Quarrel. 
6  Pan  and  Luna. 


THE    POET  253 

his  rose.1  Lightning  is  a  bright  sword,  plunged 
through  the  pine-tree  roof.  And  Mont  Blanc  him- 
self is  half  effaced  by  his  "  earth-brood  "  of  aiguilles, 
— "  needles  red  and  white  and  green,  Horns  of 
silver,  fangs  of  crystal,  set  on  edge  in  his  demesne."  2 
Browning's  joy  in  abrupt  and  intricate  form  had 
then  a  definite  root  in  his  own  nervous  and  muscular 
energy.  It  was  no  mere  preference  which  might  be 
indulged  or  not,  but  an  instinctive  bias,  which  deeply 
affected  his  way  not  only  of  imagining  but  of  con- 
ceiving the  relations  of  things.  In  this  brilliant 
visual  speech  of  sharply  cut  angles  and  saliences,  of 
rugged  incrustations,  and  labyrinthine  multiplicity, 
Browning's  romantic  hunger  for  the  infinite  had  to 
find  its  expression ;  and  it  is  clear  that  the  bias  im- 
plicit in  speech  imposed  itself  in  some  points  upon 
the  matter  it  conveyed.  Abrupt  demarcations  cut 
off  soul  from  body,  and  man  from  God ;  the  infinite 
habitually  presented  itself  to  him  as  something,  not 
transcending  and  comprehending  the  finite,  but  begin- 
ning where  the  finite  stopped, —  Eternity  at  the  end  of 
Time.  But  the  same  imaginative  passion  for  form 
which  imposed  some  concrete  limitations  upon  the 
Absolute  deprived  it  also  of  the  vagueness  of  abstrac- 
tion. Browning's  divinity  is  very  finite,  but  also 
amazingly  real  and  near ;  not  "  interfused "  with 
the  world,  which  is  full  of  stubborn  distinctness, 
but  permeating  it  through  and  through,  U  curled 
inextricably  round  about "  all  its  beauty  and  its 
power,3  "intertwined"  with  earth's  lowliest  exist- 
1  The  Heretic's  Tragedy.  *  La  Saisiaz.  3  Easter-Day,  xxx. 


254  BROWNING 

ence,  and  thrilling  with  answering  rapture  to  every 
throb  of  life.  The  doctrine  of  God's  "  immanence  " 
was  almost  a  commonplace  with  Browning's  genera- 
tion. Browning  turned  the  doctrine  into  imaginative 
speech  equalled  in  impressiveness  by  that  of  Carlyle 
and  by  that  of  Emerson,  but  distinguished  from  both 
by  an  eager  articulating  concrete  sensibility  which 
lifts  into  touch  with  supreme  Good  all  the  laby- 
rinthine multiplicity  of  existence  which  Carlyle  im- 
patiently suppressed,  while  it  joyously  accentuates 
the  sharp  dissonances  which  Emerson's  ideality 
ignored. 


VI 

3.     Joy  in  Power 

Browning  was  thus  announced,  we  have  seen,  even 
by  his  splendour  of  colouring  and  his  rich  and  clear- 
cut  plasticity,  as  something  more  than  a  feaster  upon 
colour  and  form.  In  his  riot  of  the  senses  there 
was  more  of  the  athlete  than  of  the  voluptuary.  His 
joy  was  that  of  one  to  whom  nervous  and  muscular 
tension  was  itself  a  stimulating  delight.  In  such  a 
temperament  the  feeling  of  energy  was  an  elemen- 
tary instinct,  a  passionate  obsession,  which  projected 
itself  through  eye  and  ear  and  imagination  into  the 
outer  world,  filling  it  with  the  throbbing  pulsations 
or  the  clashing  conflict  of  vehement  powers.  We 
know  that  it  was  thus  with  Browning.  "  From  the 
first    Power   was,    I    knew,"   he   wrote    in    the    last 


THE    POET  255 

autumn  of  his  life.1  It  was  a  primitive  instinct,  and 
it  remained  firmly  rooted  to  the  last.  As  Words- 
worth saw  Joy  everywhere,  and  Shelley  Love,  so 
Browning  saw  Power.  If  he  later  "  saw  Love  as 
plainly,"  it  was  the  creative  and  transforming,  not  the 
emotional,  aspect  of  Love  which  caught  his  eye. 
His  sense  of  Power  played  a  yet  more  various  part  in 
the  shaping  of  his  poetic  world  than  did  his  sense  of 
form.  But  intellectual  growth  inevitably  modified  the 
primitive  instinct  which  it  could  not  uproot ;  and  his 
sense  of  Power  traverses  the  whole  gamut  of  dynamic 
tones,  froUt  the  lusty  "  barbaric  "  joy  in  the  sheer 
violence  of  ripping  and  clashing,  to  the  high-wrought 
sensibility  which  throbs  in  sympathy  with  the  passion- 
ate heart-beats  of  the  stars. 

No  one  can  miss  the  element  of  savage  energy  in 
Browning.  His  associates  tell  us  of  his  sudden  fits 
of  indignation,  "  which  were  like  thunder-storms  "  ; 
of  his  "  brutal  scorn  "  for  effeminacy,  of  the  "  vibra- 
tion of  his  loud  voice,  and  his  hard  fist  upon  the  ta- 
ble," which  made  short  work  of  cobwebs.2  The  im- 
pact of  hard  resisting  things,  the  jostlings  of  stubborn 
matter  bent  on  going  its  own  way,  attracted  him  as 
the  subtle  compliances  of  air  appealed  to  Shelley ;  and 
he  runs  riot  in  the  vocabulary  (so  abundantly  devel- 
oped in  English)  which  conveys  with  monosyllabic 
vigour  to  the  ear  these  jostlings  and  impacts. 

"  Who  were  the  strugglers,  what  war  did  they  wage ; 
Whose  savage  trample  thus  could  pad  the  dank 
Soil  to  a  plash  ?  " 

Asolando  :  Reverie.  9  Mr.  E.  Gosse,  in  Diet,  of  N.B, 


256  BROWNING 

he  asks  in  Childe  Roland, — altogether  an  instructive 
example  of  the  ways  of  Browning's  imagination  when 
working,  as  it  so  rarely  did,  on  a  deliberately  fantastic 
theme.  Hear  again  with  what  savage  joy  his  Moon 
"rips  the  womb"  of  the  cloud  that  crosses  it;  Shel- 
ley's Moon,  in  keeping  with  the  ways  of  his  more 
tender-hefted  universe,  merely  broke  its  woof.  So  the 
gentle  wife  of  James  Lee  sees  in  a  vineyard  "  the 
vines  writhe  in  rows  each  impaled  on  its  stake." 

His  "  clefts  "  and  "  wedges  "  owe  their  attraction 
not  only  to  their  intricate  angularity  but  to  the  violent 
cleavings  and  thrustings  apart  which  they  result  from 
or  produce.  And  his  clefts  are  as  incomplete  without 
some  wild  bit  of  fierce  or  frightened  life  in  their  grip 
as  are  Shelley's  caves  without  some  form  of  unearthly 
maidenhood  in  their  embrace.1  His  mountains — so 
rarely  the  benign  pastoral  presences  of  Wordsworth — 
are  not  only  craggy  and  rough,  but  invisible  axes  have 
hewn  and  mutilated  them, — they  are  fissured  and 
cloven  and  u  scalped  "  and  u  wind-gashed."  When 
they  thrust  their  mighty  feet  into  the  plain  and  u  en- 
twine base  with  base  to  knit  strength  more  intensely,"  2 
the  image  owes  its  grandeur  to  the  double  suggestion 
of  sinewy  power  and  intertwined  limbs.  Still  grander, 
but  in  the  same  style,  is  the  sketch  of  Hildebrand  in 
Sordello ;  — 


"  See  him  stand 
Buttressed  upon  his  mattock,  Hildebrand 
Of  the  huge  brain-mask  welded  ply  o'er  ply 

1  Cf.  Prometheus  Unbound,  passim.  2  Saul. 


THE    POET  257 

As  in  a  forge  ;     .     .     .     teeth  clenched, 

The  neck  tight-corded  too,  the  chin  deep-trenched, 

As  if  a  cloud  enveloped  him  while  fought 

Under  its  shade,  grim  prizers,  thought  with  thought 

At  deadlock."  ' 

When  the  hoary  cripple  in  Childe  Roland  laughs, 
his  mouth-edge  is  "pursed  and  scored "  with  his  glee; 
and  his  scorn  must  not  merely  be  uttered,  but  written 
with  his  crutch  "  in  the  dusty  thoroughfare."  This 
idea  is  resumed  yet  more  dramatically  in  the  image  of 
the  palsied  oak,  cleft  like  "  a  distorted  mouth  that  splits 
its  rim  gaping  at  death."  Later  on,  thrusting  his 
spear  into  the  gloom,  he  fancies  it  "  tangled  in  a  dead 
man's  hair  or  beard."  Similarly,  Browning  is  habit- 
ually lured  into  expressive  detail  by  the  idea  of 
smooth  surfaces  frayed  or  shredded, — as  of  flesh  torn 
with  teeth  or  spikes  :  Akiba, — 

"  the  comb 
Of  iron  carded,  flesh  from  bone,  away,"8 

or  Hippolytus,  ruined  on  the  "  detested  beach "  that 
was  "bright  with  blood  and  morsels  of  his  flesh."3 

This  savageness  found  vent  still  more  freely  in  his 
rendering  of  sounds.  By  one  of  those  apparent  par- 
adoxes which  abound  in  Browning,  the  poet  who  has 
best  interpreted  the  glories  of  music  in  verse,  the  poet 
of  musicians  par  excellence,  is  also  the  poet  of  grind- 
ings  and  jostlings,  of  jars  and  clashes,  of  grating  hinges 
and  flapping  doors  ;  civilisation  mated  with  barbarism, 
"  like  Jove  in  a  thatched  house." 

»  Sordello,  i.  171.  *  Jock.  Halk.  *  Artemis  Frol. 


258  BROWNING 

Music  appealed  to  him  by  its  imaginative  sugges- 
tiveness,  or  by  its  intricate  technique ;  as  the  mine 
from  which  Abt  Vogler  reared  his  palace,  the  loom  on 
which  Master  Hugues  wove  the  intertwining  har- 
monies of  his  fugue.  But  the  most  dulcet  harmony 
aroused  him  less  surely  to  vivacious  expression  than 
some  "gruff  hinge's  invariable  scold,"1  or  the  quick 
sharp  rattle  of  rings  down  the  net-poles,2  or  the  hoof- 
beat  of  a  galloping  horse,  or  the  grotesque  tumble  of 
the  old  organist,  in  fancy,  down  the  u  rotten -runged, 
rat-riddled  stairs"  of  his  lightless  loft.  There  was 
much  in  him  of  his  own  Hamelin  rats'  alacrity  of 
response  to  sounds  "  as  of  scraping  tripe  "  and  squeez- 
ing apples,  and  the  rest.  Milton  contrasted  the  har- 
monious swing  of  the  gates  of  Paradise  with  the  harsh 
grinding  of  the  gates  of  hell.  Browning  would  have 
found  in  the  latter  a  satisfaction  subtly  allied  to  his 
zest  for  other  forms  of  robust  malignity. 

And  with  his  joy  in  savage  images  went  an  even 
more  pronounced  joy  in  savage  words.  He  loved  the 
grinding,  clashing,  and  rending  sibilants  and  explo- 
sives as  Tennyson  the  tender-hefted  liquids.  Both 
poets  found  their  good  among  Saxon  monosyllables, 
but  to  Tennyson  they  appealed  by  limpid  simplicity, 
to  Browning  by  gnarled  and  rugged  force.  Dante,  in 
a  famous  chapter  of  the  De  Vulgari  Eloquio?  laid  down 
a  fourfold  distinction  among  words  on  the  analogy  of 
the  varying  texture  of  the  hair ;  enjoining  the  poet  to 
avoid  both  the  extremes  of  smoothness  and  roughness, 

1  Christmas  Eve,  i.  480.  2  Englishman  in  Italy,  i.  396. 

3  De  Vulg.  Eloq.,  ii.  8. 


THE    POET  259 

— to  prefer  the  "  combed  "  and  the  "  shaggy  "  to  the 
"tousled"  and  the  "sleek."  All  four  kinds  had 
their  function  in  the  versatile  technique  of  Browning 
and  Tennyson ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  while  Ten- 
nyson's vocabulary  is  focussed  among  the  u  combed  " 
in  the  direction  of  the  "  sleek,"  Browning's  centres  in 
the  "  shaggy,"  verging  towards  the  u  tousled."  '  The 
utmost  sweetness  is  his  when  he  will ;  it  is  the  coun- 
terpart of  his  pure  intensity  of  colouring,  and  of  the 
lyric  loveliness  of  his  Pippas  and  Pompilias ;  but 

"  All  the  breath  and  the  bloom  of  the  year  in  the  bag  of  one  bee," 

though  genuine  Browning,  is  not  distinctively  and  un- 
mistakably his,  like 

"Irks  care  the   crop-full  bird?     Frets  doubt  the  maw-crammed 
beast  ?  " 



Browning's   genial   violence    continually  produced 

strokes  which  only  needed  a  little  access  of  oddity  or 
extravagance  to  become  grotesque.  He  probably  in- 
herited a  bias  in  this  direction ;  we  know  that  his 
father  delighted  in  drawing  grotesque  heads,  and  even 
"  declared  that  he  could  not  draw  a  pretty  face." 2 
But  his  grotesqueness  is  never  the  mere  comic  odd- 
ness  which  sometimes  assumes  the  name.  It  is  a  kind 
of  monstrosity  produced  not  by  whimsical  mutilations, 
but  by  a  riot  of  exuberant  power.     And  he  has  also  a 

1  Making  allowance,  of  course,  for  the  more  "  shaggy  "  and 
"  tousled "  character  of  the  English  vocabulary  as  a  whole,  com- 
pared with  Italian. 

2  H.  Corkran,  Celebrities  and  /. 


260  BROWNING 

grave  and  tragic  use  of  the  grotesque,  in  which  he 
stands  alone.  He  is,  in  fact,  by  far  the  greatest  Eng- 
lish master  of  grotesque.  Childe  Roland,  where  the 
natural  bent  of  his  invention  has  full  fling,  abounds 
with  grotesque  traits  which,  instead  of  disturbing  the 
romantic  atmosphere,  infuse  into  itran  element  of 
strange,  weird,  and  uncanny  mirth,  more  unearthly 
than  any  solemnity ;  the  day  shooting  its  grim  red  leer 
across  the  plain,  the  old  worn-out  horse  with  its  red, 
gaunt,  and  colloped  neck  a-strain ;  or,  in  Paracelsus, 
the  "  Cyclops-like  "  volcanoes  "  staring  together  with 
their  eyes  on  flame,"  in  whose  "  uncouth  pride  "  God 
tastes  a  pleasure.  Shelley  had  recoiled  from  the  hor- 
rible idea  of  a  host  of  these  One-eyed  monsters ;  ! 
Browning  deliberately  invokes  it.  But  he  can  use 
grotesque  effects  to  heighten  tragedy  as  well  as  ro- 
mance. One  source  of  the  peculiar  poignancy  of  the 
Heretic's  Tragedy  is  the  eerie  blend  in  it  of  mocking 
familiarity  and  horror. 

Yet  it  was  not  always  in  this  brutal  and  violent 
guise  that  Browning  imagined  power.  He  was  "  ever 
a  fighter,"  and  had  a  sense  as  keen  as  Byron's,  and 
far  more  joyous,  for  storm  and  turbulence;  but  he 
had  also,  as  Byron  had  not,  the  finer  sense  which 
feels  the  universe  tense  with  implicit  energies,  and  the 
profoundest   silences  of  Nature   oppressive  with  the 

1  Cf.  Locock,  Examination  of  the  Shelley  MSS.  in  the  Bodleian, 
p.  19.  At  the  words  "  And  monophalmic  (sic)  Polyphemes  who 
haunt  the  pine-hills,  flocked,"  the  writing  becomes  illegible  and  the 
stanza  is  left  incomplete.  Mr.  Forman  explains  the  breaking-oft"  in 
the  same  way. 


THE    POET  26l 

burden  of  life  straining  to  the  birth.  The  stars  in 
Saul  "  beat  with  emotion  "  and  "  shot  out  in  fire  the 
strong  pain  of  pent  knowledge,"  and  a  "  gathered  in- 
tensity "  is  "  brought  to  the  grey  of  the  hills  "  ;  upon 
the  lovers  of  In  a  Balcony  evening  comes  "  intense 
with  yon  first  trembling  star."  Wordsworth's 
"  quiet "  is  lonely,  pensive,  and  serene ;  his  stars  are 
not  beating  with  emotion,  but  "listening  quietly." 
Browning's  is  hectic,  bodeful,  high-strung.  The  vast 
featureless  Campagna  is  instinct  with  u  passion,"  and 
its  "  peace  with  joy."  ' 

"  Quietude — that's  a  universe  in  germ — 
The  dormant  passion  needing  but  a  look 
To  burst  into  immense  life."  * 

Half  the  romantic  spell  of  Childe  Roland  lies  in  the 
wonderful  suggestion  of  impending  catastrophe.  The 
gloom  is  alive  with  mysterious  and  impalpable  men- 
ace ;  the  encompassing  presences  which  everything 
suggests  and  nothing  betrays,  grow  more  and  more 
oppressively  real,  until  the  decisive  moment  when 
Roland's^ blast  suddenly  lets  them  loose. 

For  the  power  that  Browning  rejoiced  to  imagine 
was  preeminently  sudden;  an" unforeseen  cataclysm, 
abruptly  changing  the  conditions  it  found,  and  sharply 
marking  off  the  future  from  the  past.  The  same  bias 
of  imagination  which  crowded  his  inner  vision  of 
space  with  abrupt  angular  forms  tended  to  resolve  the 
slow,  continuous,  organic  energies  of  the  world  before 
his  inner  vision  into  explosion  and  catastrophe.      His 

1  Two  in  the  Campagna.  2  Asolando  :  Inapprehensiveness. 


262  BROWNING 

geology  neglects  the  aeons  of  gradual  stratification ;  it 
is  not  the  slow  stupendous  upheaval  of  continents, 
but  the  volcanic  uprush  of  the  molten  ore  among  the 
rocks,  which  renew  the  ancient  rapture  of  the  Para- 
celsian  God.  He  is  the  poet  of  the  sudden  surprises 
of  plant-life :  the  bud  "  bursting  unaware "  into 
flower,  the  brushwood  about  the  elm-tree  breaking, 
some  April  morning,  into  tiny  leaf,  the  rose-flesh 
mushroom  born  in  a  night.  The  "  metamorphoses  of 
plants,"  *  which  fascinated  Goethe  by  their  inner  con- 
tinuity, arrest  Browning  by  their  outward  abruptness : 
that  the  flower  is  implicit  in  the  leaf  was  a  fact  of 
much  less  worth  for  him  than  that  the  bud  suddenly 
passes  into  something  so  unlike  it  as  the  flower.  The 
gradual  coming  on  of  spring  among  the  mountains 
concentrates  itself  for  him  in  one  instant  of  epic 
sublimity, — that  in  which  the  mountain  unlooses  its 
year's  load  of  sound,  and 

"Fold  on  fold  all  at  once  it  crowds  thunderously  down  to  his 
feet."  2 

Even  in  the  gradual  ebb  of  day  he  discovers  a  preg- 
nant instant  in  which  day  dies  :  — 

"  For  note,  when  evening  shuts, 
A  certain  moment  cuts 
The  deed  off,  calls  the  glory  from  the  grey." 

Hence    his    love    of    images   which    convey   these 
sudden  transformations, — the  worm,  putting  forth  in 


Metamorphose  der  PJlanzen.  2  Saul. 


THE    POET  263 

autumn  its  u  two  wondrous  winglets,"  l  the  "  tran- 
scendental platan,"  breaking  into  foliage  and  flower 
at  the  summit  of  its  smooth  tall  bole ;  the  splendour 
of  flame  leaping  from  the  dull  fuel  of  gums  and  straw. 
In  such  images  we  see  how  the  simple  joy  in  abrupt 
changes  of  sensation  which  belonged  to  his  riotous 
energy  of  nerve  lent  support  to  his  peremptory  way 
of  imagining  all  change  and  especially  all  vital  and 
significant  becoming.  For  Browning's  trenchant 
imagination  things  were  not  gradually  evolved;  a 
sudden  touch  loosed  the  springs  of  latent  power,  or 
an  overmastering  energy  from  without  rushed  in  like 
a  flood.  With  all  his  connoisseur's  delight  in  tech- 
nique, language  and  sound  were  only  spells  which  un- 
locked a  power  beyond  their  capacity  to  express. 
Music  was  the  "  burst  of  pillared  cloud  by  day  and 
pillared  fire  by  night,"  starting  up  miraculously  from 
the  barren  wilderness  of  mechanical  expedients,2  and 
poetry  "  the  sudden  rose  "  3  "  breaking  in  "  at  the 
bidding  of  a  "  brace  of  rhymes."  That  in  such  trans- 
mutations Browning  saw  one  of  the  most  marvellous 
of  human  powers  we  may  gather  from  the  famous 
lines  of  Abt  Vogler  already  quoted  :  — 

"  And  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed  to  man, 
That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame,  not  a  fourth  sound,  but  a 
star."  / 

1  Sordello  (Works,  i.  123).      9  Fifine,  xlii.      »  Transcendentalism. 


264  BROWNING 

VII 

4.    Joy  in  Soul 

No  saying  of  Browning's  is  more  familiar  than  that 
in  which  he  declared  "  incidents  in  the  development 
of  souls  "  *  to  be  to  him  the  supreme  interest  of  poetry. 
The  preceding  sections  of  this  chapter  have  suffi- 
ciently shown  how  far  this  formula  was  from  exhaust- 
ing the  vital  springs  of  Browning's  work.  "Little 
else "  might  be  "  worth  study  " ;  but  a  great  many 
other  things  had  captured  those  rich  sensibilities, 
without  which  the  "  student's  analytic  zeal "  might 
have  devoured  the  poet.  On  the  other  hand,  his  su- 
preme interest  in  "  incidents  in  the  development  of 
souls  "  was  something  very  different  from  the  demo- 
cratic enthusiasm  for  humanity,  or  the  Wordsworthian 
joy  in  the  u  common  tears  and  mirth "  of  u  every 
village."  The  quiet  routine  existence  of  uneventful 
lives  hardly  touched  him  more  than  the  placid  qui- 
escence of  animal  and  vegetable  existence ;  the  com- 
monplace of  humanity  excited  in  him  no  mystic  rap- 
ture ;  the  human  "  primrose  by  the  river's  brim," 
merely  as  one  among  a  throng,  was  for  him  pretty 
much  what  it  was  to  Peter  Bell.  There  was  no  doubt 
a  strain  of  pantheistic  thought  in  Browning  which 
logically  involved  a  treatment  of  the  commonplace 
as  profoundly  reverent  as  Wordsworth's  own.  But 
his  passionate  faith  in  the  divine  love  pervading  the 
universe  did  not  prevent  his  turning  away  resolutely 
from  regions  of  humanity,  as  of  nature,  for  which  his 
1  Preface  to  Sordello,  ed.  1863. 


THE    POET  265 

poetic  alchemy  provided  no  solvent.  His  poetic 
throne  was  not  built  on  "  humble  truth  " ;  and  he,  as 
little  as  his  own  Sordello,  deserved  the  eulogy  of  the 
plausible  Naddo  upon  his  verses  as  based  "on  man's 
broad  nature,"  and  having  a  "  staple  of  common- 
sense."  *  The  homely  toiler  as  such,  all  members  of 
homely  undistinguished  classes  and  conditions  of  men, 
presented,  as  embodiments  of  those  classes  and  con- 
ditions, no  coign  of  vantage  to  his  art.  In  this  point, 
human-hearted  and  democratic  as  he  was,  he  fell  short 
not  only  of  the  supreme  portrayers  of  the  eternal 
commonplaces  of  peasant  life, — of  a  Burns,  a  Words- 
worth, a  Millet,  a  Barnes, — but  even  of  the  fastidious 
author  of  The  Northern  Farmer.  Once,  in  a  moment 
of  exaltation,  at  Venice,  Browning  had  seen  Hu- 
manity in  the  guise  of  a  poor  soiled  and  faded  bit  of 
Venetian  girlhood,  and  symbolically  taken  her  as  the 
future  mistress  of  his  art.  The  programme  thus  laid 
down  was  not,  like  Wordsworth's  similarly  announced 
resolve  to  sing  of  "sorrow  barricadoed  evermore 
within  the  walls  of  cities,"  simply  unfulfilled ;  but  it 
was  far  from  disclosing  the  real  fountain  of  his 
inspiration. 

And  as  Browning  deals  little  with  the  commonplace 
in  human  nature,  so  he  passes  by  with  slight  concern 
the  natural  relationships  into  which  men  are  born,  as 
compared  with  those  which  they  enter  b^  passion  or 
^choice.  The  bond  of  kinship,  the  love  between  par- 
ents and  children,  brothers  and  sisters,  so  prolific  of 
poetry  elsewhere,  is  singularly  rare  and  unimportant 
1  Sordello,  ii.  135. 


266  BROWNING 

in  Browning,  to  whom  every  other  variety  of  the 
love  between  men  and  women  was  a  kindling  theme. 
The  names  of  husband,  of  wife,  of  lover,  vibrate  for 
him  with  a  poetry  more  thrilling  than  any  that  those 
names  excite  elsewhere  in  the  poetry  of  his  genera- 
tion ;  but  the  mystic  glory  which  in  Blake  and 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  gathered  about  uncon- 
scious childhood  is  all  but  fled.  Children — real  chil- 
dren, naive  and  inarticulate,  like  little  Fortu — rarely 
appear  in  his  verse,  and  those  that  do  appear  seem 
to  have  been  first  gently  disengaged,  like  Pippa,  David, 
Theocrite,  from  all  the  clinging  filaments  of  Home. 
In  its  child  pathos  The  Pied  Piper — addressed  to  a 
child — stands  all  but  alone  among  his  works.  His 
choicest  and  loveliest  figures  are  lonely  and  unat- 
tached. Pippa,  David,  Pompiha,  Sordello,  Paracelsus, 
Balaustion,  Mildred,  Caponsacchi,  have  no  ties  of 
home  and  blood,  or  only  such  as  work  malignly  upon 
their  fate.  Mildred  has  no  mother,  and  she  falls ; 
Sordello  moves  like  a  Shelleyan  shadow  about  his 
father's  house ;  Balaustion  breaks  away  from  the  ties 
of  kindred  to  become  a  spiritual  daughter  of  Athens ; 
Paracelsus  goes  forth,  glorious  in  the  possession  of 
"the  secret  of  the  world,"  which  is  his  alone; 
Caponsacchi,  himself  sisterless  and  motherless,  re- 
leases Pompilia  from  the  doom  inflicted  on  her  by  her 
parents'  calculating  greed ;  the  song  of  Pippa  re- 
leases Luigi  from  the  nobler  but  yet  hurtful  bondage 
of  his  mother's  love. 

More  considerable,  but  yet  relatively  slight,  is  the 
part  played  in  Browning's  poetry  by  those  larger  and 


THE    POET  267 

more  complex  communities,  like  the  City  or  the  State, 
whose  bond  of  membership,  though  less  involuntary 
than  that  of  family,  is  still  for  the  most  part  the  ex- 
pression of  material  necessity  or  interest,  not  of  spirit- 
ual discernment,  passion,  or  choice.  Patriotism,  in 
this  sense,  is  touched  with  interest  but  hardly  with 
conviction,  or  with  striking  power,  by  Browning. 
Casa  Guidi  windows  betrayed  too  much.  Two  great 
communities  alone  moved  his  imagination  profoundly ; 
just  those  two,  namely,  in  which  the  bond  of  common 
political  membership  was  most  nearly  merged  in  the 
bond  of  a  common  spiritual  ideal.  And  Browning 
puts  the  loftiest  passion  for  Athens  in  the  mouth  of 
an  alien,  and  the  loftiest  Hebraism  in  the  mouth  of  a 
Jew  of  the  dispersion.  Responsive  to  the  personal 
cry  of  the  solitary  hero,  Browning  rarely  caught  or 
cared  to  reproduce  the  vaguer  multitudinous  murmur 
of  the  great  mass.  In  his  defining,  isolating  imagina- 
tion the  voice  of  the  solitary  soul  rings  out  with  thrill- 
ing clearness,  but  the  "  still  sad  music  of  humanity  " 
escapes.  The  inchoate  and  the  obsolescent,  the  in- 
distinctness of  immaturity,  the  incipient  disintegration 
of  decay,  the  deepening  shadow  of  oblivion,  the  half- 
instinctive  and  organic  bond  of  custom,  whatever  stirs 
the  blood  but  excites  only  blurred  images  in  the  brain, 
and  steals  into  character  without  passing  through  the 
gates  of  passion  or  of  thought,  finds  imperfect  or 
capricious  reflection  in  his  verse. 

Browning's  interest  in  "  soul "  was  not,  then,  a 
diffused  enjoyment  of  human  nature  as  such.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  human  nature  stood  for  too  much 


268  BROWNING 

with  him,  his  sense  of  what  all  personality  at  the  low- 
est implies  was  too  keen,  to  allow  him  to  relish,  or 
make  much  use  of,  those  unpsychological  amalgams  of 
humanity  and  thought, — the  personified  abstractions. 
Whether  in  the  base  form  branded  by  Wordsworth, 
or  in  the  lofty  and  noble  form  of  Keats's  "  Autumn  " 
and  Shelley's  "  West  Wind,"  this  powerful  instru- 
ment of  poetic  expression  was  touched  only  in  fugitive 
and  casual  strokes  to  music  by  Browning's  hand. 
Personality,  to  interest  him,  had  to  possess  a  possible 
status  in  the  world  of  experience.  It  had  to  be  of  the 
earth,  and  like  its  inhabitants.  The  stamp  of  fash- 
ioning intelligence,  or  even  of  blind  myth-making  in- 
stinct, alienates  and  warns  him  off.  He  climbs  to  no 
Olympus  or  Valhalla,  he  wanders  through  no  Empy- 
rean. His  rare  divinities  tread  the  visible  and  solid 
ground.  His  Artemis  u  prologizes  "  to,  his  Herakles 
plays  a  part  in,  a  human  drama;  and  both  are  as 
frankly  human  themselves  as  the  gods  of  Homer. 
Shelley  and  Keats  had  rekindled  about  the  faded  forms 
of  the  Greek  gods  the  elemental  Nature-worship  from 
which  they  had  started ;  Apollo,  Hyperion,  are  again 
glorious  symbols  of  the  "  all-seeing  "  and  all-vitalising 
Sun.  Browning,  far  from  seeking  to  recover  their 
primitive  value,  treats  their  legends,  with  the  easy 
rationalism  of  Euripides  or  Ferishtah,  as  a  mine  of 
v  ethical  and  psychological  illustration.  He  can  play 
/'charmingly,  in  later  years,  with  the  myth  of  Pan  and 
Luna,  of  Arion  and  the*  dolphin,1  or  of  Apollo  and 
the  Fates,  but  idyl  gets  the  better  of  nature  feeling ; 

1  Fifine  at  the  Fair,  lxxviii. 


or 

THE    POET  269 

"  maid-moon M  Luna  is  far  more  maid  than  moon. 
The  spirit  of  autumn  does  not  focus  itself  for  him,  as 
for  Keats,  in  some  symbolic  shape,  slumbering  among 
the  harvest  swathes  or  at  watch  over  the  fragrant 
cider-press ;  it  breaks  up  into  the  vivid  concrete  traits 
of  The  Englishman  in  Italy.  The  spirit  of  humanity 
is  not  shadowed  forth  in  a  Prometheus,  but  realised  in 
a  Caponsacchi. 

VIII 

What,  then,  in  the  vast  multifarious  field  of  soul-life 
were  the  points  of  special  attraction  for  Browning  ? 
To  put  it  in  a  word,  the  same  fundamental  instincts 
of  the  senses  and  the  imagination  which  we  have 
watched  shaping  the  visible  world  of  his  poetry,  equally 
determined  the  complexion  of  its  persons.  The  joy 
in  pure  and  intense  colour,  in  abruptness  of  line  and 
intricacy  of  structure,  in  energetic  movement  and  sud- 
den disclosure  and  transformation, — all  these  charac- 
teristics have  their  analogies  in  Browning's  feeling  for 
the  complexion,  morphology,  and  dynamics  of  what 
he  calls  the  soul.  Just  as  this  lover  of  crowded  laby- 
rinthine forms  surprises  us  at  first  by  his  masses  of 
pure  and  simple  colour,  untroubled  by  blur  or  modu- 
lation, so  in  the  long  procession  of  Browning's  men  of 
the  world1,  adepts  in  the  tangled  lore  of  experience, 
there  mingle  from  time  to  time  figures  radiant  with  a 
pure,  intense,  immaculate  spiritual  light, — Pippa,  Pom- 
pilia,  the  David  of  the  earlier  Saul.  Something  of  the 
strange  charm  of  these  naively  beautiful  beings  springs 
from  their  isolation.     That  detachment  from  the  bonds 


27O  BROWNING 

of  home  and  kindred  which  was  noticed  above  in  its 
negative  aspect,  appears  now  as  a  source  of  positive 
expressiveness.  They  start  into  unexplained  existence 
like  the  sudden  beauty  of  flames  from  straw.  Brown- 
ing is  no  poet  of  the  home,  but  he  is  peculiarly  the 
poet  of  a  kind  of  spirituality  which  subsists  independ- 
ently of  earthly  ties  without  disdaining  them,  lonely  but 
unconscious  of  loneliness.  Pippa  would  hardly  be  so 
recognisably  steeped  as  she  is  in  the  very  atmosphere 
of  Browning's  mind,  but  for  this  loneliness  of  hers, — 
the  loneliness  neither  of  the  exile  nor  of  the  anchor- 
ite, but  native,  spontaneous,  and  serene.  Wordsworth 
sometimes  recalls  it,  but  he  is  apt  to  invest  his  lonely 
beings  with  a  mystic  glamour  which  detaches  them 
from  humanity  as  well  as  from  their  fellow  men.  The 
little  "  H.  C,  six  years  old,"  is  "  a  dewdrop  which  the 
morn  brings  forth,"  that 

"  at  the  touch  of  wrong,  without  a  strife, 
Slips  in  a  moment  out  of  life." 

Pippa,  with  all  her  ideality  and  her  upward  gaze,  has  her 
roots  in  earth ;  she  is  not  the  dewdrop  but  the  flower. 
But  loneliness  belongs  in  a  less  degree  to  almost  all 
characters  which  seriously  engaged  Browning's  imagi- 
nation. His  own  intense  isolating  self-consciousness 
infused  itself  into  them.  Each  is  a  little  island  king- 
dom, judged  and  justified  by  its  own  laws,  and  not  en- 
tirely intelligible  to  the  foreigner.  Hence  his  persist- 
ent use  of  the  dramatic  monologue.  Every  man  had 
his  point  of  view,  and  his  right  to  state  his  case. 
"  Where  you  speak  straight  out,"  Browning  wrote  in 


THE    POET  27I 

effect,  as  we  saw,  in  one  of  his  earliest  letters  to  his 
future  wife,  "  I  break  the  white  light  in  the  seven 
colours  of  men  and  women  "  ;  '  and  each  colour  had 
its  special  truth  and  worth.  His  study  of  character  is 
notoriously  occupied  with  failures  of  transit  between 
mind  and  mind.  His  lovers  miss  the  clue;  if  they 
find  it,  as  in  By  the  Fireside,  the  collapse  of  the  barrier 
walls  is  told  with  triumph,  and  the  spell  of  the  forests 
invoked  to  explain  it. 

And  within  the  viewless  intrenchments  thus  drawn 
about  character  Browning's  imagination  was  prone  to 
reproduce  the  abrupt  and  intricate  play  of  line  and 
surface  which  fascinated  his  outward  eye.  "  The 
care-bit,  erased,  broken-up  beauties  ever  took  my 
taste,"  says,  in  Sordello,  the  creator  of  the  pure  flame- 
like soul-beauty  of  Pompilia  and  Pippa ;  very  much 
as  the  crumbling  and  blistering  of  the  frescoed  walls 
are  no  less  needful  to  the  charm  he  feels  in  his  South- 
ern villa  than  the  "  blue  breadth  of  sea  without 
break"  expanding  before  it.  The  abruptness,  the 
sharp  transitions,  the  startling  and  picturesque  con- 
trasts which  mark  so  much  of  the  talk  of  his  persons, 
reflect  not  merely  his  agility  of  mind  but  his  aesthetic 
relish  for  the  Gothic  richness  and  fretted  intricacy 
that  result.  The  bishop  of  St.  Praxed's  monologue^ 
for  instance,  is  a  sort  of  live  mosaic, — anxious  en- 
treaty to  his  sons,  diapered  with  gloating  triumph 
over  old  Gandulph.  The  larger  tracts  of  soul-life 
are  apt  in  his  hands  to  break  up  into  shifting  phases, 
or  to  nodulate  into  sudden  crises  ;  here  a  Blougram, 
1  R.  B.  to  £.  B.  B.,  i.  6. 


272 


BROWNING 


with  his  "  chess-board  "  of  faith  diversified  by  doubt, 
there  a  Paracelsus,  advancing  by  complex  alternations 
of  "  aspiring  "  and  "  attainment."  Everywhere  in 
Browning  the  slow  continuities  of  existence  are  ob- 
scured by  vivid  moments, — the  counterpart  of  his 
bursts  of  sunlight  through  rifts  and  chinks.  A  mo- 
ment of  speech  with  Shelley  stands  out,  a  brilliant 
handbreadth  of  time  between  the  blank  before  and 
y  after ;  a  moment  of  miserable  failure  blots  out  the 
•A— whole  after-life  of  Martin  Relph ;  a  moment  of 
/  heroism  stamps  once  for  all  the  quality  of  Clive  ;  the 
whole  complex  story  of  Pompilia  focusses  in  the 
"splendid  minute  and  no  more"  in  which  she  is 
u  saved " ;  the  lover's  whole  life  is  summed  up  in 
u  some  moment's  product  "  when  "  the  soul  declares 
itself," l  or  utters  the  upgarnered  poetry  of  its  passion  ; 
or  else,  conversely,  he  looks  back  on  a  moment 
equally  indelible,  when  the  single  chance  of  love  was 
missed.  "  It  once  might  have  been,  once  only,"  is 
the  refrain  of  the  lover's  regret  in  Browning,  as 
"  once  and  only  once  and  for  one  only  "  is  the  key- 
note of  his  triumph.  In  the  contours  of  event  and 
circumstance,  as  in  those  of  material  objects,  he  loves 
jagged  angularity,  not  harmonious  curve.  "  Our  in- 
terest's in  the  dangerous  edge  of  things," — 

"  The  honest  thief,  the  tender  murderer, 
The  superstitious  atheist ;  " 

where  an   alien   strain   violently   crosses   the   natural 

course  of  kind ;  and  these  are  only  extreme  examples 

1  By  the  Fireside. 


THE    POET  273 

of  the  abnormal  nature  which  always  allured  and 
detained  Browning's  imagination,  though  it  was  not 
always  the  source  of  its  highest  achievement.  Ivano- 
vitch,  executing  justice  under  the  forms  of  murder, 
Caponsacchi,  executing  mercy  under  the  forms  of  an 
elopement,  the  savagery  of  Halbert  and  Hob  unnerved 
by  an  abrupt  reminiscence, — it  is  in  these  suggestive 
and  pregnant  situations,  at  the  meeting-points  of  ap- 
parently irreconcilable  classes  and  kinds,  that  Brown- 
ing habitually  found  or  placed  those  of  his  characters 
who  represent  any  class  or  kind  at  all. 

The  exploring,  in-and-out  scrutinising  instincts  of 
Browning's  imagination  equally  left  their  vivid  im- 
press upon  his  treatment  of  character.  If  the  sharp 
nodosities  of  character  caught  his  eye,  its  mysterious 
recesses  and  labyrinthine  alleys  allured  his  curiosity  ;  *^» 
this  lover  of  "  clefts,"  this  pryer  among  tangled  locks 
and  into  the  depths  of  flower-bells,  peered  into  all  the 
nooks  and  chambers  of  the  soul  with  inexhaustible  en- 
terprise. It  is  hard  to  deny  that  even  The  Ring  and  the 
Book  itself^sufFers  something  from  the  unflagging  zest 
with  which  the  poet  pursues  all  the  windings  of  popular 
speculation,  all  the  fretwork  of  Angelo  de  Hyacinthis's 
forensic  and  domestic  futilities.  The  poem  is  a  great 
poetic  Mansion,  with  many  chambers,  and  he  will 
lead  us  sooner  or  later  to  its  inner  shrine  ;  but  on  the 
way  there  are  "  closets  to  search  and  alcoves  to  im- 
portune,"— 

"  The  day  wears, 
And  door  succeeds  door, 

We  try  the  fresh  fortune, 
Range  the  wide  house  from  the  wing  to  the  centre." 


\ 


274  BROWNING 

For  the  most  part,  after  the  not  wholly  successful 
experiment  of  direct  analysis  in  Sordello,  he  chose  to 
make  his  men  and  women  the  instruments  of  their 
own  illumination  ;  and  this  was  a  second  source  of  his 
delight  in  the  dramatic  monologue.  He  approached 
all  problematic  character  with  a  bias  towards  disbe- 
lieving appearances,  which  was  fed,  if  not  generated, 
by  that  restlessly  exploring  instinct  of  an  imagination 
that  spontaneously  resolved  surface  and  solidity  into 
integument  and  core.  Not  that  Browning  always 
displays  the  core  ;  on  the  contrary,  after  elaborately 
removing  an  imposing  mask  from  what  appears  to  be 
a  face,  he  will  hint  that  the  unmasked  face  is  itself  a 
mask.  "  For  Blougram,  he  believed,  say,  half  he 
spoke."  Browning  is  less  concerned  to  "  save  "  the 
subjects  of  his  so-called  "  Special  Pleadings  "  than  to 
imagine  them  divested  of  the  gross  disguises  of  public 
rumour  about  them ;  not  naked  as  God  made  them, 
but  clothed  in  the  easy  undress  of  their  own  subtly 
plausible  illusions  about  themselves.  But  the  optimist 
in  him  is  always  alert,  infusing  into  the  zest  of  ex- 
ploration a  cheery  faith  that  behind  the  last  investi- 
ture lurks  always  some  soul  of  goodness,  and  wel- 
coming with  a  sudden  lift  of  verse  the  escape  of  some 
diviner  gleam  through  the  rifts,  such  as  Blougram's  — 

'«  Just  when  we're  safest  comes  a  sunset  touch." 

Yet  it  is  hardly  a  paradox  to  say  that  his  faith  throve 
upon  the  obstacles  it  overcame.  He  imagined  yet 
more  vividly  than  he  saw,  and  the  stone  wall  which 
forbade  vision  but  whetted  imagination,  acquired  an 


THE    POET  275 

ideal  merit  in  his  eyes  because  it  was  not  an  open 
door.  In  later  life  he  came  with  growing  persistence 
to  regard  the  phenomenal  world  as  a  barrier  of  illusion 
between  man  and  truth.  But  instead  of  chilling  his 
faith,  the  obstacle  only  generated  that  poet's  philosophy 
of  the  "  value  of  a  lie  "  which  perturbs  the  less  expe- 
rienced reader  of  Fifine.  "  Truth  "  was  "  forced  to 
manifest  itself  through  falsehood,"  won  thence  by  the 
excepted  eye,  at  the  rare  season,  for  the  happy  mo- 
ment, till  "  through  the  shows  of  sense,  which  ever 
proving  false  still  promise  to  be  true,"  the  soul  of  man 
worked  its  way  to  its  final  union  with  the  soul  of 
God.1 

And  here  at  length  if  not  before  we  have  a  clear 
glimpse  of  the  athlete  who  lurks  behind  the  explorer. 
Browning's  joy  in  imagining  impediment  and  illusion 
was  only  another  aspect  of  his  joy  in  the  spiritual  en- 
ergy which  answers  to  the  spur  of  difficulty  and 
"  works  "  through  the  shows  of  sense ;  and  this  other 
joy  found  expression  in  a  poetry  of  soul  yet  more 
deeply  tinged  with  the  native  hue  of  his  mind.  u  From 
the  first,  Power  was,  I  knew ; "  and  souls  were  the 
very  central  haunt  and  focus  of  its  play.  Not  that 
strong  natures,  as  such,  have  much  part  in  Browning's 
poetic-world;  the  strength  that  allured  his  imagina- 
tion was  not  the  strength  that  is  rooted  in  nerve  or 
brain,  slowly  enlarging  with  the  build  of  the  organ- 
ism, but  the  strength  that  has  suddenly  to  be  begotten 
or  infused,  that  leaps  by  the  magic  of  spiritual  influ- 
1  Fifine  at  the  Fair,  cxxiv. 


276  BROWNING 

ence  from  heart  to  heart.  If  Browning  multiplies 
and  deepens  the  demarcations  among  material  things, 
he  gives  his  souls  a  rare  faculty  of  transcending  them. 
Bright  spiritual  beings  like  Pippa  shed  their  souls  in- 
nocently and  unwittingly  about  like  a  spilth  of 
"X-rays,"  and  the  irradiation  penetrates  instantly  the 
dense  opposing  integuments  of  passion,  cupidity,  and 
worldliness.  At  all  times  in  his  life  these  accesses  of 
spiritual  power  occupied  his  imagination.  Cristina's 
momentary  glance  and  the  Lady  of  Tripoli's  dreamed- 
of  face  lift  their  devotees  to  completeness : — 

"  She  has  lost  me,  I  have  gained  her, 
Her  soul's  mine,  and  now  grown  perfect 
I  shall  pass  my  life's  remainder." 

Forty  years  later,  Browning  told  with  far  greater 
realistic  power  and  a  grim  humour  suited  to  the  theme, 
the  u  transmutation  "  of  Ned  Bratts.  Karshish  has 
his  sudden  revealing  flash  as  he  ponders  the  letter  of 
Abib  :— 

"  The  very  God  !     Think,  Abib,  dost  thou  think,— 
So  the  All-great  were  the  All-loving  too  " — 

and  the  boy  David  his  prophetic  vision.  A  yet  more 
splendid  vision  breaks  from  the  seemingly  ruined  brain 
of  the  dying  Paracelsus,  and  he  has  a  gentler  comrade 
in  the  dying  courtier,  who  starts  up  from  his  darkened 
chamber  crying  that  — 

"  Spite  of  thick  air  and  closed  doors 
God  told  him  it  was  June, — when  harebells  grow, 
And  all  that  kings  could  ever  give  or  take 
Would  not  be  precious  as  those  blooms  to  me." 


THE    POET  277 

But  it  is  not  only  in  these  magical  transitions  and 
transformations  that  Browning's  joy  in  soul  was  de- 
cisively coloured  by  his  joy  in  power.  A  whole  class 
of  his  characters — the  most  familiarly  "  Browning- 
esque  "  division  of  them  all — was  shaped  under  the 
sway  of  this  master-passion;  the  noble  army  of 
"  strivers  "  who  succeed  and  of  "  strivers  "  who  fail, 
baffled  artists  and  rejected  lovers  who  mount  to  higher 
things  on  stepping-stones  of  their  frustrated  selves, 
like  the  heroes  of  Old  Painters  in  Florence,  and  The 
Last  Ride  Together,  and  The  Lost  Mistress ;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  the  artists  and  lovers  who  fail  for  want  of 
this  saving  energy,  like  the  Duke  and  Lady  of  the 
Statue  and  the  Bust,  like  Andrea  del  Sarto  and  the 
Unknown  Painter.  But  his  very  preoccupation  with 
Art  and  with  Love  itself  sprang  mainly  from  his 
peculiar  joy  in  the  ardent  putting-forth  of  soul.  No 
kind  of  vivid  consciousness  was  indifferent  to  him,  but 
the  luxurious  receptivity  of  the  spectator  or  of  a  pas- 
sively beloved  mistress  touched  him  little  compared 
with  the  faintest  pulsation  of  the  artist's  "love  of 
loving,  rage  of  knowing,  feeling,  seeing  the  absolute 
truth  of  things,"  of  the  lover's  passion  for  union  with 
another  soul.  When  he  describes  effects  of  music  or 
painting,  he  passes  instinctively  over  to  the  standpoint 
of  the  composer  or  the  performer ;  shows  us  Hugues 
and  Andrea  themselves  at  the  organ,  or  the  easel ;  and 
instead  of  feeling  the  world  turned  into  "  an  unsub- 
stantial faery  place  "  by  the  magic  of  the  cuckoo  or 
the  thrush,  strikes  out  playful  theories  of  the  pro- 
fessional methods  of  these  songsters, — the  cuckoo's 


278  BROWNING 

monopoly  of  the  u  minor  third,"  the  thrush's  wise 
way  of  repeating  himself  u  lest  you  should  think  he 
never  could  recapture  his  first  fine  careless  rapture." 
Suffering  enters  Browning's  poetry  almost  never  as 
the  artless  wail  of  the  helpless  stricken  thing ;  the  in- 
tolerable pathos  of  Ye  Banks  and  Braes,  or  of 

"  We  twa  hae  paidl't  in  the  burn 
Frae  morning  sun  till  dine," 

belonged  to  a  side  of  primitive  emotion  to  which 
"  artificial "  poets  like  Tennyson  were  far  more  sen- 
sitive than  he.  Suffering  began  to  interest  him  when 
the  wail  passed  into  the  fierceness  of  vindictive  pas- 
sion, as  in  The  Confessional,  or  into  the  outward  calm^ 
of  a  self-subjugated  spirit,  as  in  Any  Wife  to  Any  HusA 
band,  or  A  Woman's  Last  Word :  or  into  reflective  and 
speculative,  if  bitter,  retrospect,  as  in  The  Worst  of  It 
or  'James  Lee's  Wife.  And  happiness,  equally, — even 
the  lover's  happiness, — needed,  to  satisfy  Browning, 
to  have  some  leaven  of  challenging  disquiet ;  the  lover 
must  have  something  to  fear,  or  something  to  forgive, 
some  hostility,  or  guilt,  or  absence,  or  death,  to  brave. 
Or  the  rapturous  union  of  lovers  must  be  remembered 
with  a  pang,  when  they  have  quarrelled  ;  or  its  joy  be 
sobered  by  recalling  the  perilous  hairbreadth  chances 
incurred  in  achieving  it  (By  the  Fireside)  — 

"  Oh,  the  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is ! 

And  the  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away! 
How  a  sound  shall  quicken  content  to  bliss, 
Or  a  breath  suspend  the  blood's  best  play, 
And  life  be  a  proof  of  this !  " 


THE    POET  279 

Further,  his  joy  in  soul  drew  into  the  sphere  of  his 
poetry  large  tracts  of  existence  which  lay  wholly  or 
partly  outside  the  domain  of  soul  itself.  The  world 
of  the  lower  animals  hardly  touched  the  deeper  chords 
of  his  thought  or  emotion ;  but  he  watched  their 
activities  with  a  very  genuine  and  constant  delight, 
and  he  took  more  account  of  their  pangs  than  he  did 
of  the  soul-serving  throes  of  man.1  His  imagina- 
tive selection  among  the  countless  types  of  these 
u  low  kinds  "  follows  the  lead  of  all  those  forms  of 
primitive  joy  which  we  have  traced  in  his  types  of 
men  and  women  :  here  it  is  the  quick-glancing  in- 
tricate flights  of  birds  or  insects,  the  flitting  of  quick 
sandpipers  in  and  out  of  the  marl,  or  of  flies  about 
an  old  wall ;  now  the  fierce  contrasts  of  hue,  angular- 
ity, and  grotesque  deformity  all  at  once  in  Caliban's 
beasts : — 

"  Yon  otter,  sleek-wet,  black,  lithe  as  a  leech ; 
Yon  auk,  one  fire-eye  in  a  ball  of  foam, 
That  floats  and  feeds ;  a  certain  badger  brown 
He  hath  watched  hunt  with  that  slant  white-wedge  eye 
By  moonlight ; " 

or  it  is  the  massive  power  of  the  desert  lion,  in  The 
Glove,  or  the  bright  aethereal  purity  of  the  butterfly 
fluttering  over  the  swimmer's  head,  with  its 

"  membraned  wings 
So  wonderful,  so  wide, 
So  sun-suffused  ;  "  2 
>  Donald. 

2  Some    of   these   examples  are   from   Mr.   Brooke's  excellent 
chapter  on  Browning's  Treatment  of  Nature. 


280  BROWNING 

or  the  cheery  self-dependence  of  the  solitary  insect. 
"  I  always  love  those  wild  creatures  God  sets  up 
for  themselves,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Barrett,  "  so  in- 
dependently, so  successfully,  with  their  strange  happy 
minute  inch  of  a  candle,  as  it  were,  to  light  them."  * 
Finally,  Browning's  joy  in  soul  flowed  over  also 
upon  the  host  of  lifeless  things  upon  which  "  soul  " 
itself  has  in  any  way  been  spent.  To  bear  the  mark 
of  Man's  art  and  toil,  to  have  been  hewn  or  moulded 
or  built,  compounded  or  taken  to  pieces,  by  human 
handiwork,  was  to  acquire  a  certain  romantic  allure- 
ment for  Browning's  imagination  hardly  found  in  any 
other  poet  in  the  same  degree.  The  "  artificial  prod- 
ucts "  of  civilised  and  cultured  life  were  for  him  not 
merely  instruments  of  poetic  expression  but  springs 
of  poetic  joy.  No  poetry  can  dispense  with  images 
from  "  artificial  "  things  ;  Wordsworth  himself  does 
not  always  reject  them  ;  with  most  poets  they  are 
commoner,  merely  because  they  are  better  known ; 
but  for  Browning  the  impress  of  "  our  meddling  in- 
tellect "  added  exactly  the  charm  and  stimulus  which 
complete  exemption  from  it  added  for  Wordsworth. 
His  habitual  imagery  is  fetched,  not  from  flowers  or 
clouds  or  moving  winds  and  waters,  but  from  wine- 
cups,  swords  and  sheaths,  lamps,  tesselated  pavements, 
chess-boards,  pictures,  houses,  ships,  shops.  Most  of 
these  appealed  also  to  other  instincts, — to  his  joy  in 
brilliant  colour,  abrupt  line,  intricate  surface,  or 
violent  emotion.  But  their  "  artificiality  "  was  an 
added  attraction.  The  wedge,  for  instance,  appeals 
>  To  E.  B.  B.y  5U1  Jan.,  1846. 


THE    POET  28l 

to  him  not  only  by  its  angularity  and  its  rending 
thrust,  but  as  a  weapon  contrived  by  man's  wit  and 
driven  home  by  his  muscle.  The  cup  appeals  to  him 
not  only  by  its  shape,  and  by  the  rush  of  the  foaming 
wine,  but  as  fashioned  by  the  potter's  wheel,  and 
flashing  at  the  festal  board.  His  delight  in  complex 
technicalities,  in  the  tangled  issues  of  the  law-courts, 
and  the  intertwining  harmonies  of  Bach,  sprang  from 
his  joy  in  the  play  of  mind  as  well  as  from  his  joy 
in  mere  intricacy  as  such.  His  mountains  are 
gashed  and  cleft  and  carved  not  only  because  their 
intricacy  of  craggy  surface  or  the  Titanic  turmoil  of 
mountain-shattering  delights  him,  but  also  because 
he  loves  to  suggest  the  deliberate  axe  or  chisel  of 
the  warrior  or  the  artist  Man.  He  turns  the  quiet 
vicissitudes  of  nature  into  dexterous  achievements  of 
art.  If  he  does  not  paint  or  dye  the  meads,  he  turns 
the  sunset  clouds  into  a  feudal  castle,  shattered  slowly 
with  a  visible  mace ;  the  morning  sun  pours  into 
Pippa's  chamber  as  from  a  wine-bowl ;  and  Fifine's 
ear  is 

"cut 
Thin  as  a  dusk-leaved  rose  carved  from  a  cocoanut."  ! 

Sordello's  slowly  won  lyric  speech  is  called 

"a  rude 
Armour     .     .     .     hammered  out,  in  time  to  be 
Approved  beyond  the  Roman  panoply 
Melted  to  make  it"2 

And   thirty   years   later  he   used  the   kindred   but 
1  Fifine  at  the  Fair,  ii.  325.  2  Sordello,  i.  135. 


282  BROWNING 

more  recondite  simile  of  a  ring  with  its  fortifying 
alloy,  to  symbolise  the  welded  IVahrheit  and  Dichtung 
of  his  greatest  poem. 

Between  Dichtung  and  Wahrheit  there  was,  indeed, 
in  Browning's  mind,  a  closer  affinity  than  that  simile 
suggests.  His  imagination  was  a  factor  in  his  ap- 
prehension of  truth ;  his  "  poetry  "  cannot  be  de- 
tached from  his  interpretation  of  life,  nor  his  inter- 
pretation of  life  from  his  poetry.  Not  that  all  parts 
of  his  apparent  teaching  belong  equally  to  his  poetic 
mind.  On  the  contrary,  much  of  it  was  derived 
from  traditions  of  which  he  never  shook  himself 
clear ;  much  from  the  exercise  of  a  speculative  rea- 
son which,  though  incomparably  agile,  was  neither 
well  disciplined  in  its  methods  nor  particularly 
orginal  in  its  grasp  of  principles.  But  with  the 
vitalising  heart  of  his  faith  neither  tradition  nor  rea- 
soning had  so  much  to  do  as  that  logic  of  the  imagina- 
tion by  which  great  poets  often  implicitly  enunciate 
what  the  after-thinker  slowly  works  out.  The  char- 
acteristic ways  of  Browning's  poetry,  the  fundamental 
joys  on  which  it  fed,  of  which  the  present  chapter  at- 
tempts an  account,  by  no  means  define  the  range  or 
the  limits  of  his  interpreting  intellect,  but  they  mark 
the  course  of  its  deepest  currents,  the  permanent 
channels  which  its  tides  overflow,  but  to  which  in  the 
last  resort  they  return.  In  the  following  chapter  we 
shall  have  to  study  these  fluctuating  movements  of 
his  explicit  and  formulated  thought,  and  to  distinguish, 
if  we  may,  the  ground-tone  of  the  deep  waters  from 
the  more  resonant  roll  of  the  shifting  tides. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    INTERPRETER   OF   LIFE 

His  voice  sounds  loudest  and  also  clearest  for  the  things  that  as 
a  race  we  like  best ;  ...  the  fascination  of  faith,  the  accept- 
ance of  life,  the  respect  for  its  mysteries,  the  endurance  of  its 
charges,  the  vitality  of  the  will,  the  validity  of  character,  the 
beauty  of  action,  the  seriousness,  above  all,  of  great  human  passion. 
s^~  —Henry  James. 

I 

The  trend  of  speculative  thought  in  Europe  during 
the  century  which  preceded  the  emergence  of  Brown- 
ing may  be  described  as  a  progressive  integration  along 
several  distinct  lines  of  the  great  regions  of  existence 
which  common  beliefs,  resting  on  a  still  vigorous 
medievalism,  thrust  apart.  Nature  was  brought  into 
nearer  relation  with  Man,  and  Man  with  God,  and 
God  with  Nature  and  with  Man.  In  one  aspect,  not 
the  least  striking,  it  was  a  "  return  to  Nature  "  ;  econ- 
omists from  Adam  Smith  to  Malthus  worked  out  the 
laws  of  man's  dependence  upon  the  material  world ; 
poets  and  idealists  from  Rousseau  to  Wordsworth  dis- 
covered in  a  life  "according  to  nature"  the  ideal  for 
man ;  sociologists  from  Hume  to  Bentham,  and  from 
Burke  to  Coleridge,  applied  to  human  society  concep- 
tions derived  from  physics  or  from  biology,  and  em- 
phasised all  that  connects  it  with  the  mechanical 
aggregate  of  atoms,  or  with  the  organism. 

283 


284  BROWNING 

In  another  aspect  it  was  a  return  to  God.  If  the 
scientific  movement  tended  to  subjugate  man  to  a 
Nature  in  which,  as  Laplace  said,  there  was  no  occa- 
sion for  God,  Wordsworth  saw  both  in  Nature  and  in 
man  a  spirit  "  deeply  interfused  "  ;  and  the  great  con- 
temporary school  of  German  philosophy  set  all  ethical 
thinking  in  a  new  perspective  by  its  original  handling 
of  the  old  thesis  that  duty  is  a  realisation  of  the  will 
of  God. 

But,  in  yet  another  aspect,  it  was  a  return  to  Man. 
If  Man  was  brought  nearer  to  Nature  and  to  God,  it 
was  to  a  Nature  and  to  a  God  which  had  themselves 
acquired,  for  him,  closer  affinities  with  humanity.  He 
divined,  with  Wordsworth,  his  own  joy,  with  Shelley 
his  own  love,  in  the  breathing  flower ;  he  saw  with 
Hegel  in  the  Absolute  Spirit  a  power  vitally  present 
in  all  man's  secular  activities  and  pursuits.  And  these 
interpreting  voices  of  poets  and  philosophers  were  but 
the  signs  of  less  articulate  sensibilities  far  more  widely 
diffused,  which  were  in  effect  bringing  about  a  mani- 
fold expansion  and  enrichment  of  normal,  mental,  and 
emotional  life.  Scott  made  the  romantic  past,  Byron 
and  Goethe,  in  their  different  ways,  the  Hellenic  past, 
a  living  element  of  the  present ;  and  Fichte,  calling 
upon  his  countrymen  to  emancipate  themselves,  in  the 
name  not  of  the  "  rights  of  men  "  but  of  the  genius 
of  the  German  people,  uttered  the  first  poignant 
recognition  of  national  life  as  a  glorious  vesture  array- 
ing the  naked  body  of  the  individual  member,  not  an 
aggregate  of  other  units  competing  with  or  controlling 
him. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  285 

In  this  complicated  movement  Browning  played  a 
very  notable  and  memorable  part.  But  it  was  one  of 
which  the  first  generation  of  his  readers  was  entirely, 
and  he  himself  to  a  great  extent,  unconscious,  and 
which  his  own  language  often  disguises  or  conceals. 
Of  all  the  poets  of  the  century  he  had  the  clearest 
and  most  confident  vision  of  the  working  of  God  in 
the  world,  the  most  buoyant  faith  in  the  divine  origin 
and  destiny  of  man.  Half  his  poetry  is  an  effort  to 
express,  in  endless  variety  of  iteration,  the  nearness 
of  God,  to  unravel  the  tangled  circumstance  of  human 
life,  and  disclose  everywhere  infinity  enmeshed  amid 
the  intricacies  of  the  finite. 

On  the  side  of  Nature  his  interest  was  less  keen 
and  his  vision  less  subtle.  His  "visitations  of  the 
living  God"  came  to  him  by  other  avenues  than  those 
opened  by  Wordsworth's  ecstatic  gaze,  "  in  love  and 
holy  passion,"  upon  outward  beauty.  Only  limited 
classes  of  natural  phenomena  appealed  to  him  power- 
fully at  all,  the  swift  and  sudden  upheavals  and  catas- 
trophes, the  ardours  and  accesses,  the  silence  that 
thrills  with  foreboding  and  suspense.  For  continui- 
ties, both  of  the  mechanical  and  the  organic  kind,  he 
lacked  sense.  We  have  seen  how  his  eye  fastened 
everywhere  upon  the  aspects  of  life  least  suggestive 
of  either  iron  uniformity  or  harmonious  evolution. 
The  abrupt  demarcations  which  he  everywhere  im- 
poses or  discovers  were  the  symptom  of  a  primitive 
ingrained  atomism  of  thought  which  all  the  synthetic 
strivings  of  a  God-intoxicated  intellect  could  not  en- 
tirely overcome. 


286  BROWNING 

II 

His  metaphysical  thinking  thus  became  an  effort  to 
reconcile  an  all-embracing  synthesis  with  a  sense  of 
individuality  as  stubborn  and  acute  as  ever  man  had. 
Body  and  Soul,  Nature  and  Spirit,  Man  and  God, 
Good  and  Evil,  he  presented  now  as  cooperative  or 
alien,  now  as  hostile  antagonists  or  antitheses.  That 
their  opposition  is  not  ultimate,  that  evil  is  at  bottom 
a  form  of  good,  and  all  finite  existence  a  passing  mode 
of  absolute  being,  was  a  conviction  towards  which  his 
thought  on  one  side  constantly  strove,  which  it  occa- 
sionally touched,  but  in  which  it  could  not  securely 
rest.  Possessed  by  the  thirst  for  absoluteness,  he 
vindicated  the  "  infinity "  of  God  and  the  soul  by 
banishing  all  the  "  finiteness  "  of  sense  into  a  limbo 
of  illusion.  The  infinite  soul,  imprisoned  for  life  in 
a  body  which  at  every  moment  clogs  its  motion  and 
dims  its  gaze,  fights  its  way  through  the  shows  of 
sense,1  u  which  ever  proving  false  still  promise  to  be 
true,"  until  death  opens  the  prison-gate  and  restores 
the  captive  to  its  infinity.  Sorrow  and  evil  were 
stains  imposed  by  Time  upon  the  white  radiance  of  an 
eternal  being  ;  and  Browning  sometimes  rose,  though 
with  a  less  sure  step,  to  the  dizzier  height  of  holding 
Time  itself  to  be  unreal,  and  the  soul's  earthly  life 
not  an  episode  in  an  endless  sequence,  but  a  dream  of 
progressive  change  imposed  upon  a  changeless  and 
timeless  essence. 

But  there  were,  as  has  been  said,  elements  in 
Browning's  mental  make  which  kept  this  abstract  and 

1  Fifine  at  the  Fair. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  287 

formal  theory,  fortified  though  it  was  by  theological 
prepossessions,  in  check.  His  most  intense  conscious- 
ness, his  most  definite  grip  upon  reality,  was  too  closely 
bound  up  with  the  collisions  and  jostlings,  the  limitfc 
and  angularities,  of  the  world  of  the  senses,  for  the 
belief  in  their  illusoriness  easily  to  hold  its  ground. 
This  "  infinite  soul "  palpably  had  its  fullest  and 
richest  existence  in  the  very  heart  of  finite  things. 
Wordsworth  had  turned  for  "  intimations  of  immor- 
tality "  to  the  remembered  intuitions  of  childhood ; 
Browning  found  them  in  every  pang  of  baffled  aspi- 
ration and  frustrate  will.  Hence  there  arose  in  the 
very  midst  of  this  realm  of  illusion  a  new  centre  of 
reality  ;  the  phantoms  took  on  solid  and  irrefragable 
existence,  and  refused  to  take  to  flight  when  the  cock- 
crow announced  that  u  Time  was  done,  Eternity 
begun." 

Body  and  Time  had  in  general  too  strong  a  grip 
upon  him  to  be  resolved  into  illusion.  His  actual 
pictures  of  departed  souls  suggest  a  state  very  unlike 
that  reversion  of  the  infinite  spirit  which  had  been 
thrust  upon  Matter  and  distended  in  Time,  to  the 
timeless  Infinitude  it  had  forgone.  It  does  not  es- 
cape from  Time,  but  only  passes  on  from  the  limited 
section  of  Time  known  as  life,  into  another  section, 
without  limit,  known  as  Eternity.  And  if  it  escapes 
from  Body,  at  least  Browning  represents  his  departed 
soul  more  boldly  than  any  other  modern  poet  in  a 
garb  of  flesh.  Evelyn  Hope,  when  she  wakens  in 
another  world,  will  find  her  unknown  lover's  leaf  in 
her  hand,  and  "  remember,  and  understand." 


288  BROWNING 

And  just  as  Matter  and  Time  invade  Browning's 
spiritual  eternity,  so  his  ideal  of  conduct  for  man 
while  still  struggling  with  finite  conditions  casts  its 
shadow  on  to  the  state  of  immortal  release.  Two 
conceptions,  in  fact,  of  the  life  after  death,  corre- 
sponding to  divergent  aspects  of  his  thought,  contend 
in  Browning's  mind.  Now  it  is  a  state  of  emancipa- 
tion from  earthly  limits, — when  the  "  broken  arcs  " 
become  "  perfect  rounds  "  and  "  evil  "  is  transformed 
into  "  so  much  good  more,"  and  "  reward  and  repose  " 
succeed  the  "struggles"1  by  which  they  have  been 
won.  But  at  times  he  startles  the  devout  reader  by 
foreshadowing  not  a  sudden  transformation  but  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  slow  educative  process  of  earth  in  a 
succession  of  preliminary  heavens  before  the  consum- 
mate state  is  reached.  "  Progress,"  in  short,  was  too 
deeply  ingrained  in  Browning's  conception  of  what 
was  ultimately  good,  and  therefore  ultimately  real,  not 
to  find  entrance  into  his  heaven,  were  it  only  by  some 
casual  backdoor  of  involuntary  intuition.  Even  in 
that  more  gracious  state  "  achievement  lacked  a 
gracious  somewhat"2  to  his  indomitable  fighting  in- 
stinct. 

r 

{  «  Soul  resteth  not,  and  mine  must  still  advance," 

he  had  said  in  Pauline,  and  the  soul  that  ceased  to 
advance  ceased  for  Browning,  in  his  most  habitual 
mood,  to  exist.  The  u  infinity  "  of  the  soul  was  not 
so  much  a  gift  as  a  destiny,  a  power  of  hungering  for 
ever  after  an  ideal  completeness  which  it  was  indefi- 
i  Saul,  xvii.  2  One  Word  More. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  289 

%^0U^'         '  -'  ■./-■■ 

nitely  to  pursue  and  to  approach,  but  not  to  reach. 
Far  from  having  to  await  a  remote  emancipation  to 
become  completely  itself,  the  soul's  supremest  life  was 
in  its  hours  of  heroic  stress,  when  it  kept  some  dragon 
of  unbelief  quiet  underfoot,  like  Michael, 

"  Who  stands  calm,  just  because  he  feels  it  writhe." 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  athletic  energy  of  Brown- 
ing's nature  told  most  palpabl)T^ipontne  complexion 
of  his  thought.  It  did  not  affect  its  substance,  but  it 
altered  the  bearing  of  the  parts,  giving  added  weight 
to  all  its  mundane  and  positive  elements.  It  gave 
value  to  every  challenging  obstruction  akin  to  that 
which  allured  him  to  every  angular  and  broken  sur- 
face, to  all  the  u  evil  "  which  balks  our  easy  percep- 
tion of  "good."1  Above  all,  by  idealising  effort,  it 
created  a  new  ethical  end  which  every  strenuous  spirit 
could  not  merely  strive  after  but  fulfil,  every  day  of 
its  mortal  life  ;  and  thus  virtually  transferred  the  focus 
of  interest  and  importance  from  "  the  next  world's 
reward  and  repose  "  to  the  vital  "  struggles  in  this." 

Browning's  characteristic  conception  of  the  nature 
and  destiny  of  man  was  thus  not  a  compact  and  con- 
sistent system,  but  a  group  of  intuitions  nourished 
from  widely  different  regions  of  soul  and  sense,  and 
undergoing,  like  the  face  of  a  great  actor,  striking 
changes  of  expression  without  material  change  of 
feature  under  the  changing  incidence  of  stress  and 
glow.  The  ultimate  gist  of  his  teaching  was  pre- 
sented through  the  medium  of  conceptions  proper  to 
Bishop  Blougram. 


29O  BROWNING 

another  school  of  thought,  which,  like  a  cryptogram, 
convey  one  meaning  but  express  another.  He  had  to 
work  with  categories  like  finite  and  infinite,  which  the 
atomic  habits  of  his  mind  thrust  into  exclusive  oppo- 
sition ;  whereas  the  profoundest  thing  that  he  had  to 
say  was  that  the  u  infinite  "  has  to  be  achieved  in  and 
through  the  finite,  that  just  the  most  definitely  out- 
lined action,  the  most  individual  purpose,  the  most 
sharply  expressive  thought,  the  most  intense  and  per- 
sonal passion,  are  the  points  or  saliency  in  life  which 
most  surely  catch  the  radiance  of  eternity  they  break. 
The  white  light  was  "  blank  "  until  shattered  by  re- 
fraction ;  and  Browning  is  less  Browning  when  he 
glories  in  its  unbroken  purity  than  when  he  rejoices 
in  the  prism,  whose  obstruction  alone 

"  shows  aright 
The  secret  of  a  sunbeam,  breaks  its  light 
Into  the  jewelled  bow  from  blankest  white."  * 

We  have  now  to  watch  Browning's  efforts  to  in- 
terpret this  profound  and  intimate  persuasion  of  his  in 
terms  of  the  various  conceptions  at  his  disposal.2 

Ill 

Beside  the  soul,  there  was  something  else  that 
"  stood  sure  "  for  Browning — namely,  God.  Here, 
too,  a  theological  dogma,  steeped  in  his  ardent  mind, 
acquired  a  new  potency  for  the   imagination,  and  a 

1  Deaf  and  Dumb. 

2  On  the  matter  of  this  section  cf.  Mr.  A.  C.  Pigou's  acute  and 
lucid  discussions,  Browning  as  a  Religious  Teacher,  ch.  viii.  and  ix. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  29 1 

more  vital  nexus  with  man  and  nature  than  any  other 
poet  of  the  century  had  given  it.  And  here,  too,  the 
mystic  and  the  positive  strains  of  Browning's  genius 
wrought  together,  impressing  themselves  equally  in 
that  wonderful  Browningesque  universe  in  which 
every  germ  seems  to  be  itself  a  universe  "  needing 
but  a  look  to  burst  into  immense  life,"  and  infinity  is 
ever  at  hand,  behind  a  closed  door.  The  whole  of  his 
theology  was  an  attempt  to  express  consistently  two 
convictions,  rarely  found  of  the  same  intensity  in  the 
same  brain,  of  the  divineness  of  the  universe  and  the 
individuality  of  man. 

The  mechanical  Creator  of  Paley  and  the  deists 
could  never  have  satisfied  him.  From  the  first  he 
a  saw  God  everywhere."  There  was  in  him  the  stuff 
of  which  the  "  God-intoxicated  "  men  are  made,  and 
he  had  moments,  like  that  expressed  in  one  of  his 
most  deliberate  and  emphatic  personal  utterances,  in 
which  all  existence  seemed  to  be  the  visible  Face  of 
God  — 

"  Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows."  ■ 

He  clearly  strained  towards  the  sublime  pantheistic 
imaginings  of  the  great  poets  of  the  previous  genera- 
tion,— Wordsworth's  "  Something  far  more  deeply 
interfused,"  Shelley's  "  One  spirit's  plastic  stress," 
and  Goethe's  Erdgeist,  who  weaves  the  eternal  vesture 
of  God  at  the  loom  of  Time.  The  dying  vision  of 
Paracelsus  is  as  sublime  as  these,  and  marks  Brown- 
ing's nearest  point  of  approach  to  the  ways  of 
1  Epilogue. 


292  BROWNING 

thought  they  embody.  In  all  the  vitalities  of  the 
world,  from  the  uncouth  play  of  the  volcano  to  the 
heaven-and-earth  transfiguring  mind  of  man,  God 
was  present,  sharing  their  joy.  But  even  here  the 
psychological  barrier  is  apparent,  against  which  all  the 
surge  of  pantheistic  impulse  in  Browning  broke  in 
vain.  This  God  of  manifold  joys  was  sharply  de- 
tached from  his  universe;  he  was  a  sensitive  and 
sympathetic  spectator,  not  a  pervading  spirit.  In 
every  direction  human  personality  opposed  rigid  fron- 
tiers which  even  the  infinite  God  could  not  pass,  and 
no  poet  less  needed  the  stern  warning  which  he  ad- 
dressed to  German  speculation  against  the  "gigantic 
stumble  "  x  of  making  them  one.  The  mystic's  dream 
of  seeing  all  things  in  God,  the  Hegelian  thesis  of  a 
divine  mind  realising  itself  in  and  through  the  human, 
found  no  lodgment  in  a  consciousness  of  mosaic-like 
clearness  dominated  by  the  image  of  an  incisively 
individual  and  indivisible  self.  In  later  life  the  sharp 
lines  which  he  drew  from  the  first  about  individual 
personality  became  a  ring-fence  within  which  each 
man  "cultivated  his  plot,"2  managing  independently 
as  he  might  the  business  of  his  soul.  The  divine 
love  might  wind  inextricably  about  him,3  the  dance 
of  plastic  circumstance  at  the  divine  bidding  impress 
its  rhythms  upon  his  life,4  he  retained  his  human 
identity  inviolate,  a  "  point  of  central  rock  "  amid  the 
welter  of  the  waves.5     His  love  might  be  a  "  spark  from 

1  Christmas- Eve.  2  Ferishtah. 

3  Easter- Day.  «  Rabbi  ben  Ezra. 

6  Epilogue. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  293 

God's  fire,"  but  it  was  his  own,  to  use  as  he  would ; 
he  u  stood  on  his  own  stock  of  love  and  power."  ■ 

IV 

In  this  sharp  demarcation  of  man's  being  from 
God's,  Browning  never  faltered.  On  the  contrary, 
the  individualising  animus  which  there  found  expres- 
sion impelled  him  to  raise  more  formidable  barriers 
about  man,  and  to  turn  the  ring-fence  which  secured 
him  from  intrusion  into  a  high  wall  which  cut  off  his 
view.  In  other  words,  the  main  current  of  Brown- 
ing's thought  sets  strongly  towards  a  sceptical  criticism 
of  human  knowledge.  At  the  outset  he  stands  on  the 
high  a  priori  ground  of  Plato.  Truth  in  its  fulness 
abides  in  the  soul,  an  "  imprisoned  splendour,"  which 
intellect  quickened  by  love  can  elicit,  which  moments 
of  peculiar  insight,  deep  joy,  and  sorrow,  and  the 
coming  on  of  death,  can  release.  But  the  gross  flesh 
hems  it  in,  wall  upon  wall,  "  a  baffling  and  perverting 
carnal  mesh,"  2  the  source  of  all  error.  The  process 
of  discovery  he  commonly  conceived  as  an  advance 
through  a  succession  of  Protean  disguises  of  truth, 
each  "  one  grade  above  its  last  presentment,"  3  until, 
at  the  rare  moment,  by  the  excepted  eye,  the  naked 
truth  was  grasped.  But  Browning  became  steadily 
more  reluctant  to  admit  that  these  fortunate  moments 
ever  occurred,  that  the  Proteus  was  ever  caught. 
Things  would  be  known  to  the  soul  as  they  were 
known  to  God  only  when  it  was  emancipated  by 
death.  Infinity  receded  into  an  ever  more  inac- 
~*  Christmas-Eve.  *  Paracelsus.  3  Fifine  cxxiv. 


294  BROWNING 

cessible  remoteness  from  the  finite.  For  the  speaker 
in  Christmas-Eve  man's  mind  was  the  image  of  God's, 
reflecting  trace  for  trace  his  absolute  knowledge ;  for 
Francis  Furini  the  bare  fact  of  his  own  existence  is 
all  he  knows,  a  narrow  rock-spit  of  knowledge  en- 
isled in  a  trackless  ocean  of  ignorance.  Thus  for 
Browning,  in  differing  moods  and  contexts,  the  mind 
of  man  becomes  now  a  transparent  pane,  opening  di- 
rectly upon  the  truth  as  God  sees  it,  now  a  coloured 
lens,  presenting  truth  in  blurred  refraction,  now  an 
opaque  mirror  idly  bodying  forth  his  futile  and  illusive 
dreams. 

These  conflicting  views  were  rooted  in  different 
elements  of  Browning's  many-sided  nature.  His  vivid 
intuition  of  his  own  self-consciousness  formed  a  stand- 
ing type  of  seemingly  absolute  immediate  knowledge, 
to  which  he  stubbornly  clung.  When  the  optimism  of 
the  u  Head  "  was  discredited,  passion-fraught  instinct, 
under  the  name  of  the  Heart,  came  to  the  rescue,  and 
valiantly  restored  its  authority.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
variety  of  subtle  attractions  drew  him  on  to  give  "  illu- 
sion "  a  wider  and  wider  scope.  Sheer  joy  in  battle 
had  no  small  share.  The  immortal  and  infinite  soul, 
projected  among  the  shows  of  sense,  could  not  be  ex- 
pected to  do  its  part  worthily  if  it  saw  through  them : 
it  had  to  believe  its  enemies  real  enemies,  and  its  war- 
fare a  rational  warfare ;  it  had  to  accept  time  and 
place,  and  good  and  evil,  as  the  things  they  seem.  To 
have  a  perfectly  clear  vision  of  truth  as  it  is  in  God  was 
to  be  dazzled  with  excess  of  light,  to  grope  and  fumble 
about  the  world  for  as  it  is  man,  like  the  risen  Lazarus  — 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  295 

"  witless  of  the  size,  the  sum,  \. 
The  value  in  proportion  of  all  things, 
Or  whether  it  be  little  or  be  much."    J 

The  mystic  who  withdrew  from  the  struggle  with  phan- 
toms to  gaze  upon  eternal  realities  was  himself  the 
victim  of  the  worst  illusions ;  while  the  hero  who 
plunged  into  that  struggle  was  training  his  soul,  and 
thereby  getting  a  grip  upon  ultimate  truth.  Thus 
Browning's  passionate  and  reiterated  insistence  upon 
the  illusiveness  of  knowledge  was  rooted  in  his  inalien- 
able faith  in  the  worth  and  reality  of  moral  conflict. 
The  infinite  soul  realised  itself  most  completely  when 
it  divested  itself  of  the  trappings  of  its  infinity,  and  it 
worked  out  God's  law  most  implicitly  when  it  ignored 
God's  point  of  view.      cA      \£ --^*^d<f  f*f*^*~( 

V 

Such  a  result  could  not  be  finally  satisfying,  and 
Browning's  thought  fastened  with  increasing  predilec- 
tion and  exclusiveness  upon  one  intense  kind  of  vitality 
in  which  the  hard  antagonism  of  good  and  evil  seems 
to  be  transcended,  and  that  complete  immersion  of  the 
soul  in  a  nature  not  its  own  appears  not  as  self-abnega- 
tion but  as  self-fulfilment.  He  did  not  himself  use 
this  phraseology  about  Love  ;  it  is  that  of  a  school  to 
which  he,  at  no  time,  it  would  seem,  made  any  con- 
scious approach.  But  it  is  clear  that  he  found  in  the 
mysterious  union  and  transfusion  of  diverse  being  which 
takes  place  in  Love,  as  Hegel  found  in  the  union  of 
opposites,  the  clue  to  the  nature  of  reality,  the  very 
core  of  the  heart  of  life.     He  did  not  talk  of  the  union 


296  BROWNING 

of  opposites,  but  of  "  infinitude  wreaking  itself  upon 
the  finite."  God  himself  would  have  been  less  divine, 
and  so,  as  God,  less  real,  had  he  remained  aloof  in 
lonely  infinity  instead  of  uniting  himself  with  all  crea- 
tion in  that  love  which  "  moves  the  world  and  the 
other  stars"';  the  "loving  worm,"  to  quote  his  preg- 
nant saying  once  more,  were  diviner  than  a  loveless 
God.  We  saw  how  his  theology  is  double-faced  be- 
tween the  pantheistic  yearning  to  find  God  everywhere 
and  the  individualist's  resolute  maintenance  of  the 
autonomy  of  man.  God's  Love,  poured  through  the 
world,  inextricably  blended  with  all  its  power  and 
beauty,  thrilled  with  answering  rapture  by  all  its  joy, 
and  striving  to  clasp  every  human  soul,  provided  the 
nearest  approach  to  a  solution  of  that  conflict  which 
Browning's  mechanical  metaphysics  permitted.  One 
comprehends,  then,  the  profound  significance  for  him 
of  the  actual  solution  apparently  presented  by  Chris- 
tian theology.  In  one  supreme,  crucial  example  the 
union  of  God  with  man  in  consummate  love  had 
actually,  according  to  Christian  belief,  taken  place,  and 
Browning  probably  uttered  his  own  faith  when  he 
made  St.  John  declare  that 

1"  The  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ 
Acknowledged  by  thy  reason  solves  for  thee 
,    All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it."  * 

1  Death  in  the  Desert.  These  lines,  however  "  dramatic,"  mark 
with  precision  the  extent,  and  the  limits,  of  Browning's  Christian 
faith.  The  evidence  of  his  writings  altogether  confirms  Mrs.  Orr's 
express  statement  that  Christ  was  for  him,  from  first  to  last,  "  a 
manifestation  of  divine  love,"  by  human  form  accessible  to  human 
love  j  but  not  the  Redeemer  of  the  orthodox  creed. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  297 

For  to  acknowledge  this  was  to  recognise  that  love 
was  divine,  and  that  mankind  at  large,  in  virtue  of 
their  gift  of  love,  shared  in  God's  nature,  finite  as 
they  were ;  that  whatever  clouds  of  intellectual  illusion 
they  walked  in,  they  were  lifted  to  a  hold  upon  reality 
as  unassailable  as  God's  own  by  the  least  glimmer  of 
love.  Whatever  else  is  obscure  or  elusive  in  Brown- 
ing, he  never  falters  in  proclaiming  the  absolute  and 
flawless  worth  of  love.  The  lover  cannot,  like  the 
scientific  investigator,  miss  his  mark,  he  cannot  be 
bafflect  or  misled  j^the  object  of  his  love  may  be  un- 
worthy, or  unresponsive,  but  in  the  mere  act  of  loving 
he  has  his  reward. 


"  Knowledge  means 
Ever  renewed  assurance  by  defeat 
That  victory  is  somehow  still  to  reach ,; 
But  love  is  victory,  the  prize  itself." l 


This  aspect  of  Browning's  doctrine  of  love,  though  it 
inspired  some  of  his  most  exalted  lyrics,  throws  into 
naked  relief  the  dearth  of  social  consciousness  in 
Browning's  psychology.  Yet  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
the  absolute  self-sufficiency  into  which  he  lifted  the 
bare  fact  of  love  was  one  of  the  mainsprings  of  his  in- 
domitable optimism.  In  Love  was  concentrated  all 
that  emancipates  man  from  the  stubborn  continuities 
of  Nature.  It  started  up  in  corrupt  or  sordid  hearts, 
and  swept  all  their  blind  velleities  into  its  purifying 
flame  of  passion  — 

J  Pillar  of  Sebzevir. 


298  BROWNING 

"  Love  is  incompatible 
With  falsehood, — purifies,  assimilates 
All  other  passions  to  itself."  l 

And  the  glimmer  of  soul  that  lurked  in  the  veriest  act 
of  humanity  the  breath  of  love  could  quicken  into  per- 
vading fire.2  Love  was  only  the  most  intense  and 
potent  of  those  sudden  accesses  of  vitality  which  are 
wont,  in  Browning,  suddenly  to  break  like  a  flame  from 
the  straw  and  dross  of  a  brutish  or  sophisticated  con- 
sciousness, confounding  foresight  and  calculation,  but 
giving  endless  stimulus  to  hope.  Even  in  the  contact 
with  sin  and  sorrow  Browning  saw  simply  the  touch 
of  Earth  from  which  Love,  like  Antaeus,  sprang  into 
fuller  being ;  they  were  the  "  dread  machinery  "  de- 
vised to  evolve  man's  moral  qualities,  "  to  make  him 
love  in  turn  and  be  beloved."  3 

But  with  all  its  insurgent  emancipating  vehemence 
Love  was  for  Browning,  also,  the  very  ground  of 
stable  and  harmonious  existence,  "  the  energy  of  in- 
tegration," as  Myers  has  finely  said,  u  which  makes  a 
cosmos  of  the  sum  of  things,"  the  element  of 
permanence,  of  law.  True,  its  harmony  was  of 
the  kind  which  admits  discord  and  eschews  routine ; 
its  law  that  which  is  of  eternity  and  not  of  yesterday  ; 
its  stability  that  which  is  only  assured  and  fortified  by 
the  chivalry  that  plucks  a  Pompilia,  or  an  Alcestis, 
from  their  legal  doom.  The  true  anarchist,  as  he 
sometimes  dared  to  hint,  was  the  cold  unreason  of 
duty  which,  as  in  Bifurcation,  keeps  lovers  meant  for 
each  other  apart.     It  is  by  love  that  the  soul  solves 

1  Collmbe's  Birthday.  2  Fifine.  3  The  Pope. 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  299 

the  problem — so  tragically  insoluble  to  poor  Sordello 
— of  "  fitting  to  the  finite  its  infinity,"  and  satisfying 
the  needs  of  Time  and  Eternity  at  once  ; 1  for  Love, 
belonging  equally  to  both  spheres,  can  bring  the  pur- 
poses of  body  and  soul  into  complete  accord  : 

"  Like  yonder  breadth  of  watery  heaven,  a  bay 
And  that  sky-space  of  water,  ray  for  ray 
And  star  for  star,  one  richness  where  they  mixed, 
As  this  and  that  wing  of  an  angel,  fixed 
Tumultuary  splendours." 

In  a  life  thus  thrilled  into  harmony  heaven  was  al- 
ready realised  on  earth ;  and  Eternity  itself  could  but 
continue  wJia^JTime^ad^^^u^K  Death,  for  such  a 
soul,  was  not  an  awaking,  for  it  had  not  slept;  nor 
an  emancipation,  for  it  was  already  free;  nor  a 
satisfying  of  desire,  for  the  essence  of  Love  was  to 
want ;  it  was  only  a  point  at  which  the  "  last  ride 
together  "  might  pass  into  an  eternal  '^riding  on  " — 

/"  With  life  forever  old,  yet  new, 
Changed  not  in  kind  but  in  degree, 
The  instant  made  Eternity, — 
And  Heaven  just  prove  that  I  and  she 

\    Ride,  ride  together,  forever  ride  !  " 

VI 

No   intellectual   formula,  no   phrase,  no  word,  can 

express    the    whole    purport    of    those    intense   and 

intimate   fusions  of  sensation,  passion,  and   thought 

which  we  call  poetic  intuition,  and  which  all  strictly 

1  Sordello,  sub  fin. 


300 


BROWNING 


poetic  "  philosophy  "  or  u  criticism  of  life  "  is  an  at- 
tempt to  interpret  and  articulate.  Browning  was 
master  of  more  potent  weapons  of  the  strictly  intel- 
lectual kind  than  many  poets  of  his  rank,  and  his 
work  is  charged  with  convictions  which  bear  upon 
philosophic  problems  and  involve  philosophic  ideas. 
But  they  were  neither  systematic  deductions  from  a 
speculative  first  principle  nor  fragments  of  tradition 
eclectically  pieced  together;  by  their  very  ambiguity 
and  Protean  many-sidedness  they  betrayed  that,  how- 
ever tinged  they  might  be  on  the  surface  with 
speculative  or  traditional  phrases,  the  nourishing  roots 
sprang  from  the  heart  of  joyous  vitality  in  a  primitive 
and  original  temperament.  In  Browning,  if  in  any 
man,  Joy  sang  that  "  strong  music  of  the  soul " 
which  re-creates  all  the  vitalities  of  the  world,  and 
endows  us  with  "a  new  Earth  and  a  new  Heaven. " 
And  if  joy  was  the  root  of  Browning's  intuition,  and 
life  u  in  widest  commonalty  spread  "  the  element  in 
which  it  moved,  Love,  the  most  intimate,  intense,  and 
marvellous  of  all  vital  energies,  was  the  ideal  centre 
towards  which  it  converged.  In  Love,  as  Browning 
understood  it,  all  those  elementary  joys  of  his  found 
satisfaction.  There  he  saw  the  flawless  purity  which 
rejoiced  him  in  Pompilia's  soul,  which  "  would  not 
take  pollution,  ermine-like  armed  from  dishonour  by 
its  own  soft  snow."  There  he  saw  sudden  incal- 
culableness  of  power  abruptly  shattering  the  con- 
tinuities of  routine,  throwing  life  instantly  into  a  new 
perspective,  and  making  barren  trunks  break  into 
sudden  luxuriance  like  the  palm;  or,  again,  intimately 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  3OI 

interpenetrating  soul  with  soul, — "one  near  one  is 
too  far"  ;  or  jntangnngThc'whole  creatiojwn  th"e  in- 
extrica1)Ie~embrace  of  God. 

But  if  all  his  instincts  and  imaginative  proclivities 
found  their  ideal  in  Love,  they  also  insensibly  im- 
pressed their  own  character  upon  his  conception  of  it. 
The  "  Love  "  which  has  so  deep  a  significance  for 
Browning  is  a  Love  steeped  in  the  original  com- 
plexion of  his  mind,  and  bearing  the  impress  of  the 
singular  position  which  he  occupies  in  the  welter  of 
nineteenth  century  intellectual  history.  His  was  one 
of  the  rare  natures  in  which  revolutionary  liberalism 
and  spiritual  reaction,  encountering  in  nearly  equal 
strength,  seem  to  have  divided  their  principles  and  ~ 
united  their  forces.  Psychologically,  the  one  had  its  I 
strongest  root  in  the  temper  which  reasons,  and  values 
ideas ;  the  other  in  that  which  feels,  and  values  emo- 
tions^ Sociologically,  the  one  stood  for  individualism,  ^ 
the  otherTor  solidarity.  In  their  ultimate  presup- 
positions, the  onelnclined  to  the  standpoint  of  the 
senses  and  experience;  the  other  to  a  mostly  vague 
and  implicit  idealism.  In  their  political  ideals,  the 
one  strove  for  progress,  and  for  freedom  as  its  condi- 
tion ;  the  other  for  order,  and  for  active  legal  interven- 
tion as  its  safeguard.  v 

In  two  of  these  four  points  of  contrast,  Browning's 
temperament  ranged  him  more  or  less  decisively  on 
the  Liberal  side.  Individualist  to  the  core,  he  was 
conspicuously  deficient  in  the  kind  of  social  mind 
which  makes  a  poet  the  voice  of  an  organised  com- 
munity,  a   nation,  or   a  class.     Progress,  again,  was     - 


302  BROWNING 

with  him  even  more  an  instinct  than  a  principle ;  and 
he  became  the  vates  sacer  of  unsatisfied  aspiration. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  he  was  not  without  elements 
of  the  temper  which  makes  for  order  was  shown  by 
his  punctilious,  almost  eager,  observance  of  social 
/  conventions,  and,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  by  the 
horror  excited  in  him  by  what  he  took  to  be  the  an- 
^\^  archy  of^  Women's  Suffrage  and  Home  Rule.  In  the 
other  two  fields  of  opposition  he  belonged  decisively 
to  the  spiritual  and  emotional  reaction.  Spirit  was 
for  him  the  ultimate  fact  of  existence,  the  soul  and 
God  were  the  indissoluble  realities.  But  his  idealism 
was  not  potent  and  pure  enough  either  to  control  the 
realist  suggestions  of  his  strong  senses  and  energetic 
temperament,  or  to  interpret  them  in  its  own  terms. 
And  in  the  conflict  between  reason  and  feeling,  or,  as 
he  put  it,  between  "  head  "  and  "  heart,"  as  sources 
of  insight,  and  factors  in  human  advancement,  feeling 
found  its  most  brilliant  champion  in  Browning,  and 
its  most  impressive  statement  in  his  doctrine  of  Love. 
An  utilitarian  reduction  of  well-doing  to  a  distribution 
of  properly  calculated  doses  of  satisfaction  he  dis- 
missed with  a  scorn  as  derisive  as  Carlyle's ;  "  gen- 
eral utility  "  was  a  favourite  of  "  that  old  stager  the 
devil." 1  Yet  no  critic  of  intellect  ever  used  intellect 
more  vigorously,  and  no  preacher  of  the  rights  of  the 
heart  ever  dealt  less  in  flaccid  sentiment.  Browning 
was  Paracelsus  as  well  as  Aprile,  and  sharply  as  he 
chose  to  dissever  "  Knowledge  "  and  "  Love/?  Love 
was  for  him  never  a  foe  of  intellect,  but  a  more  gifted 
1  Red-Cotton  Night-cap  Country. 


U 


THE    INTERPRETER    OF    LIFE  3O3 

comrade  who  does  the  same  work  more  effectively, 
who  dives  deeper,  soars  higher,  welds  more  potently 
into  more  enduring  unities,  and  flings  upon  dry  hearts 
with  a  more  infallible  magic  the  seed  of  more  marvel- 
lous new  births.  Browning  as  the  poet  of  Love  is 
thus  the  last,  and  assuredly  not  the  least,  in  the  line 
which  handed  on  the  torch  of  Plato.  The  author  of 
the  Phcedrus  saw  in  the  ecstasy  of  Love  one  of  the 
avenues  to  the  knowledge  of  the  things  that  indeed 
are.  To  Dante  the  supreme  realities  were  mirrored 
in  the  eyes  of  Beatrice.  For  Shelley  Love  was  inter- 
woven through  all  the  mazes  of  Being ;  it  was  the 
source  of  the  strength  by  which  man  masters  his  gods. 
To  all  these  masters  of  idealism  Browning's  vision  of 
Love  owed  something  of  its  intensity  and  of  its  range. 
With  the  ethical  Love  of  Jesus  and  St.  Paul  his  af- 
finities were  more  apparent,  but  less  profound.  For 
him,  too,  love  was  the_sum  of  all .morality^  and  the 
root  of  all  goodness.  But  it  resembled  more  the  joy- 
ous self-expansion  of  the  Greek  than  the  humility  and 
self-abnegation  of  Christian  love.  Not  the  saintly 
ascetic  nor  the  doer  of  good  works,  but  the  artist  and 
the  "  lover,"  dominated  his  imagination  when  he  wrote 
of  Love ;  imbuing  even  God's  love  for  the  world 
with  the  joy  of  creation  and  the  rapture  of  embrace. 
Aprile's  infinite  love  for  things  impelled  him  to  body 
them  visibly  forth.  Deeper  in  Browning  than  his 
Christianity,  and  prior  to  it,  lay  his  sense  of  immeas- 
urable worth  in  all  life,  the  poet's  passion  for  being. 

Browning's  poetry  is  thus  one  of  the  most  potent 
of  the  influences   which   in  the   nineteenth   century 


1- 


304  BROWNING 

helped  to  break  down  the  shallow  and  mischievous 
distinction  between  the  "  sacred  "  and  the  u  secular,'* 
and  to  set  in  its  place  the  profounder  division  between 
man  enslaved  by  apathy,  routine,  and  mechanical 
morality,  and  man  lifted  by  the  law  of  love  into  a 
service  which  is  perfect  freedom,  into  an  approxima- 
tion to  God  which  is  only  the  fullest  realisation  of 
humanity. 


INDEX 


Notb.— The  names  of  Persons  are  given  in  small  capitals;  titles  of  literary 
works  in  italics  ;  other  names  in  ordinary  type  ;  black  figures  indicate  the 
more  detailed  references.  Only  the  more  important  of  the  incidental  quota- 
tions are  included.     Poems  are  referred  to  only  under  their  authors'  names. 


^ESCHYLUS,  213. 

Allingham,  W.,  86. 
American  fame  of  Browning,  87. 
Aristophanes,  77,  205  f. 
Arnold,  M.,  27. 
Asolo,  28,  50,  218,  229. 
Athenceum,  The,  171,  248. 

Balzac,  42,  50,  85,  115. 
Barrett,      Elizabeth.      See 

Browning,  E.  B. 
BARTOLI,  his  Simboli,  28. 
Benckhausen,    Russian    Con- 

sul-General,  15. 

BER ANGER,  85. 

Blagden,  Isa.  See  Brown- 
ing, R.,  letters. 

Bronson,  Mrs.  Arthur,  218, 
229. 

Bronte,  Emily,  her  character, 
"  Heathcliff,"  65. 

Browning,  Robert  (grand- 
father), 4. 

Browning,  Robert  (father),  4, 
8,  19,  148  n.,  171. 

Browning,  Robert,  cosmopol- 
itan in  sympathies,  English 
by  his  art,  3,  4 ;  his  birth,  5  ; 
likeness  to  his  mother,  6  n. ; 
character  of  his  home,  6; 
boyhood,  7,  8 ;  early  sense  of 
rhythm,  8 ;  reads  Shelley, 
Keats,  and  Byron,  10  f. ; 
journey  to  St.  Petersburg, 
15  f. ;  first  voyage  to  Italy, 
27  f. ;  second  voyage  to  Italy, 


61  ;  correspondence  with  E. 
B.  Barrett,  78  ;  marriage,  80 ; 
settlement  in  Italy,  83 ; 
friendships  and  society  at 
Florence,  84  f. ;  Italian  pol- 
itics, 84f.,  Italian  scenery,  91 ; 
Italian  painting,  97  f.,  and;e*- 
music,  102  f. ;  religion,  I09f., 
his  interpretation  of  In  a 
Balcony,  144  n. ;  death  of 
Mrs.  Browning,  146;  return 
to  London,  147 ;  society, 
149 ;  summer  sojourns  in 
France,  152  f.,  201  f. ;  in  the 
Alps,  214;  death  of  Miss 
Egerton-Smith,  214 ;  Italy 
once  more,  218;  Asolo  and 
Venice,  229  f. ;  death,  231. 


Works  — 
Abt  Vogler,  70,  157  f. 
Agamemnon    (translation     of), 

2I3f. 

Andrea  del  Sarto,  70,  99  f. 
Another  Way  of  Love,  140. 
Any  Wife  to  Any  Husband,  138. 
Appearances,  210. 
Aristophanes'  Apology,  204  f. 
Artemis  Prologizes,  67,  1 89. 
Asolando,  218,  229  f. 
At  the  Mermaid,  209. 
Bad  Dreams,  229. 
Balaustion's      Adventure,     75, 

189.  / 

Baldinucci,  212. 


305 


306 


INDEX 


Bells    and    Pomegranates,    17, 

41  f.,  74. 
Bifurcation,  211. 
Bishop   of  St.    Praxed's,    The, 

70,  112,  271. 
Blot  in  the   Scutcheon,  A.,  52  f. 
Blougram's    Apology,     16,    57, 

60,  89,  112,  128  f.,  274  f. 
i?0_y  and  the  Angel,   The,    112, 

"5- 

By  the  Fireside,  93,  133  f.,  271. 
Caliban  upon  Setebos,  160  f. 
Cavalier  Tunes,  66. 
GW&fe  Roland,  94j„J2&o  f. 
Christmas- Eve  and  Easter- Day, 

80,  112  f.,  161. 
C7<?0«,  113,  124  f. 
Vlive,  220. 

Colombe^s  Birthday,  53,  56  f. 
Confessional,  The,  41,  66.* 
Cristina,  49,  68  f. 
Deaf  and  Dumb,  290. 
Death   in  the  Desert,  A.,  151, 

158  f. 
Z?<?  Gustibus,  89  f.,  91,  252. 
Dis  Aliter  Vistim,  151,  155. 
Dramas,  38  f. 
Dramatic  Idylls,  219  f. 
Dramatic    Lyrics,    39  f.,    65  f., 

78  f. 
Dramatic  Romances,  39,  78  f. 
Dramatis  Persona,  150-167,  21 1. 
Echetlos,  220. 

Englishman  in  Italy,  The,  92. 
Epilogue  to  Dramatis  Persona, 

153,  166  f.,  291. 
Epistle  of  Karshish,  An,   112, 

122  f. 
Eurydice  to  Orpheus,  156. 
Evelyn  Hope,  136,  287. 
Fears  and  Scruple's,  210. 
Ferishtah's  Fancies,  224  f. 
Fifine    at   the    Fair,    92,    148, 

195  f.,  207,  240. 
77/^    0/  M*    Duchess,    The, 

68  f.,  197. 
Flowers  Name,  The,  67. 
Forgiveness^  A,  211. 
T^ra  Zz>/0  LiJ>pi,^o,  100  f.,  1 1 1. 


Francis  Furini,  294. 
Gerard  de  Lair  esse,  219  f. 
Gismond,  42,  57,  67. 
G7*w,  Tfcr,  68  f.,  69. 
Grammarian 's    Funeral,     The, 

109  f. 
Guardian  Angel,  The,  98. 
Halberl  and  Hob,  219. 
Helen's  Tower,  sonnet,  187. 
Heretic's     Tragedy,    A,    126  f., 

260. 
Zferz/*  /?*£  188  f.,  220. 
Zfo/y  Oarr  Z>«y,  5  n.,  126. 
Home    Thoughts  from   Abroad 

(quoted),  262. 
Home  Thoughts  from  the  Sea, 

27- 
House,  209. 
7/<?w  *V  Strikes  a  Contemporary, 

107  f. 
T/iw    ftby    brought    the    Good 

News  from    Ghent    to  Aix, 

27  f.,  67,  220. 
Hugues  of  Saxe  Gotha,  Master t 

70,  104  f.,  in. 
In  a  Balcony,  141  f. 
In  a  Gondola,  67. 
In  a  Year,  138. 
Incondita,  10. 

Inn  Album,  The,  187,  206  f. 
Ins  tans  Tyrannus,  66,  90. 
In  Three  Days,  135,  139. 
Italian  in  England,  The,  90. 
Ivan  Ivanovitch,  16,  219,  221. 
Ixion,  223  f. 

James  Lee^s  Wife,  150  f. 
Jochanan  Hdlkadosh,  222. 
Jocoseria,  222  i. 
Johannes  Agricola,  18. 
King  Victor  and  King  Charles, 

16,  45,  50. 
Laboratory,  The,  39,  66. 
La  Saisiaz,  214  f. 
Last   Ride    Together,    The,    68, 

136  f.,  299. 
Life  in  a  Love,  135. 
Light  Woman,  A,  140. 
Ztf.tf  Leader,  The,  65. 
Zay/  Mistress,  The,  68,  554. 


INDEX 


307 


Love  in  a  Life,  135. 
Luria,  60,  61  f. 
Madhouse  Cells,  17. 
Martin  Relph,  219  f.,  272. 
Men  and   Women,  26,  60,  72, 

74,  86-146,  151,  ail. 
Muleykeh,  221. 

il/y  Ztf*/  Duchess,  66,  70,  21 1. 
Aft  .Stor,  139. 
Natural  Magic,  211. 
Ned  Brat ts,  219. 
Never  the  Time  and  the  Place, 

223. 
.Afoe/,  230. 
Numpholeptos,  21 1. 
#£/  Pictures  in  Florence,  90, 

ioif. 
<?«<?  Aftfy  of  Love,  136. 
(?«*?  0&firf  iJ/<?r<?,  97  f.,  144  f. 
Pacchiarotto,     108,     161,     187, 

208  f.  t 
7fc»  #«*/  Luna,  245. 
Paracelsus,  18  f.,  26,  29,  39,  43. 
Parleyings  with  Certain  People 

of.  Importance,  226  f. 
Patriot,  The,  90. 
Pauline,  I2f. 
Pearl,  a  Girl,  A,  230. 
Pheidippides,  220. 
Piclor  Ignotus,  70  f. 
Tka?  /^r,  722,  70  f.,  266. 
7%to  ./&««,  50  f.,  59,  79,  90 

150, 179  f. 

Popularity,  108. 
Porphyria^  Lover,  17. 
Pretty  Woman,  A,  140. 
Prince    Hohenstiel-Schwangau, 

16,  193  f. 
Prospice,  108,  156. 
Rabbi    ben    Ezra,    5    n.,    108, 

156  f. 
Red-cotton  Night-cap    Country, 

89  (Miranda),  187,  201  f. 
Return  of  the  Druses,  The,  45, 

47,  64. 
Reverie,  230. 
-AYng'  tm</  M<?  ifo0/£,  7&%  150  f., 

168-185,  273  f. 
Rudel,  68. 


Saint  Martin's  Summer,  211. 
£««/,  49,  71  f.,  112,  12ftJ. 

Serenade  at  the  Vil!a\i2>$- 

Shelley,  Essay  on,  21,  105  f., 
108  f. 

Sibrandus  Schafnaburgensis, 
66,  79. 

Sludge,  Mr.,  the  Medium,  89, 
163  f. 

Solomon  and  Balkis,  222. 

Sordello,  16,  25  f.,  236. 

Soil's  Tragedy,  A,  59  f. 

Spanish  Cloister,  The,  79. 

Statue  and  the  Bust,  The,  140, 
£11. 

Strafford,  16,  26,  43  f. 

Summum  Bonum,  230. 

Time's  Revenges,  66. 

Toccata  of  GaluppVs,  A,  103  f., 
152. 

Too  Late,  151. 

Transcendentalism,  107. 

7w<?  ta  M<?  Campagna,  92, 132  f.f 
138,  236. 

Two  TWj  0/"  Croisic,  The,  216  f. 

Woman's  Last  Word,  A,  138. 

Women  and  Roses,  141. 

#W  0///,  78*,  155. 

Youth  and  Art,  151,  155. 

Letters,  to  E.  B.  B.,  6  n.,  8,  9, 
49,  59  n.,  62,  63,  65,  67,  72, 
75,  78-83  passim,  85,  1131"., 
239,  249  f.,  280;  to  Miss 
Blagden,  152,  170,  172  n., 
247  ;  to  Miss  Flower,  44 ;  to 
Miss  Haworth,  27  n.,  45, 
235 ;  to  Ruskin,  235 ;  to 
Aubrey  de  Vere,  245  n. 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett Moulton  -  Barrett 
(wife).  First  allusion  to 
Browning,  75 ;  reads  Para- 
celsus, 75  n. ;  her  character, 
early  life  and  poetry,  76  f. ; 
correspondence  with  Brown- 
ing, 78  f. ;  marriage,  81  ;  set- 
tlement in  Italy,  84 ;  friend- 
ships,   society    at    Florence, 


3o8 


INDEX 


84  f. ;    death,  145  f. ;  her  re- 
lation to  Pompilia,  178. 
Aurora  Leigh,  80,  86,  150, 

208. 
Songs  before  Congress,  90. 
Sonnets  from    the    Portu- 
guese, 86. 
Casa  Guidi  Windows,  90. 
Letters   to   R.  B.,  49,  65, 
77  n.,  78-83 /owmw,  113, 
249. 
Letter  to  Ruskin,  77  n. 
Letters   to  others,  85,  89, 
92  f.,  98,  242. 
Browning,      Sarah      Anna 

(mother),  5. 
Burns,  R.,  40,  278. 
Byron,  Lord,  91".,  103,  196, 
216,  260. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  37,  42,  86, 

149,  171,  228,  254,  302. 
Carnival,  Schumann's,  200. 
Casa  Guidi,  84,  96. 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  98. 
Chaucer,  G.,  41. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  9,  94,  133. 
Cornaro,  Catharine,  50. 
Cornhill  Magazine,  The,  188. 

Dante,  30  f.,  34,  36,  65,  1191"., 

258.*.  3°3- 
Dickens,  Charles,  42,  50. 
Domett,  Alfred  (referred  to), 

99- 
Donne,  John,  8,  251  n. 
Dulwich,  7,  49,  96. 

Egerton-Smith,  Ann,  214. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  254. 
Euripides,  172  n.,  189,  206. 

Fano,  the  Brownings  at,  98. 
Faucit,  Helen  (Lady  Martin), 

43- 
Fichte,  J.  E.,  284. 
FitzGerald,    Edward,    171, 

186. 
Florence,  83  f.  passim. 


Flower,  Eliza,  12,  44. 
Forster,  John,  43. 
Fox,  W.  J.,  10,  15,  43,  86. 

Germany.  German  strain  in 
Browning,  6  n. 

Giotto,  98,  102. 

Goethe,  J.  W.  von,  7,  284; 
Faust,  20,  32,  51,  197,  291  ; 
Iphigenie,  31  n. ;  Metamor- 
phose der  PJianzen,  262; 
Ta  sso,  31;  Westostlicher 
Divan,  224. 

Greek,  early  studies  in,  9. 

Gressoney,  224. 

Haworth,  Euphrasia  Fanny, 

27  f. 
Horne,  author  of  Orion,  80. 
Hugo,  Victor,  85,  240. 

Ibsen,  H.,  The  Wild  Duck,  59. 

Jameson,  Anna,  84. 
Jews.     Browning's  attitude  to- 
wards the  Jewish  race,  5  n. 
Jonson,  Ben,  39,  212. 
Junius,  Letters  of,  8. 

Keats,  J.,   10  f.,  72  f.,  239  f., 

Kenyon,  John,  72,  77  f.,  80, 
82,  86. 

Landor,  W.   S.,   31  n.,  41  f., 

87,  96,  226  f. 
Leighton,  Sir  Frederic,  71, 

149. 
Lucca,  the  Brownings  at,  92. 

Maclise,  67. 
Macready,  43,  52. 
Maeterlinck,  M.,  142,  161  n. 
Malory,  104. 
Meredith,  Mr.  G.,  166. 
Metres,   Browning's,   184,   251, 

258. 
Michelangelo,  102. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  13. 


INDEX 


3°9 


Milsand,  Joseph,  85  f.,   188, 

201,  227. 
Milton,  J.,  71,  258. 
Monthly  Repository,  15. 
Moxon,    Edward,    publisher, 

59  n. 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  139  f. 

Napoleon  III,  Emperor,  88  f., 
193- 

Ossian,  8. 

Palestrina,  102. 
Paris,  85  f.,  91,  105,  202. 
Paul,  Saint,  303.  „ 
Phelps,  actor,  58. 
Pisa,  83. 

Plato,  14,  237,  302. 
Prinsep,  V.,  149. 

Quarles,  Francis,  8. 

Rezzonico  Palace,  229. 
Ripert-Monclar,      C  o  m  t  e 

Amedee  de,  18. 
Rome,  the  Brownings  in,  86  f. 
RosETTi,  D.  G.,  15,  86,  149.     • 
RossETTi,  Mr.  W.  M.,  170  n. 
Ruskin,  John,  77  n.,  149,  235. 

Sand,  George,  85. 
Schiller,  F.,  69,  207. 
Scott,  Sir  W.,  93.      ^ 
Shakespeare,    W.,    65,.   198, 


209  ;  Romeo  and  Juliet,  39 ; 
The  Tempest,  51,  ffii  t.y 
Love's  Labour's  Lost", 56; 
Hamlet,   58;   Julius    Crnar, 


63;     Othello,    62;    As     You 

Like  It,  94. 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  10,  11,  14,  21, 

34,  89,  109,  181,  236,  237  f., 

252,  255,  260,  268,  291. 
Smart,      Christopher,      his 

Song  to  David,  7 1 
South  ey,  R.,  9. 
Spiritualism,  87. 
Swinburne,  Mr.  A.  C,  150. 

Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord,  3, 

20,  32,  86  f.,  128,  149,  171, 

174,  258  f. 
Tennyson,  Frederick,  149. 
Thackeray,      Annie     (Mrs. 

Ritchie),  201. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  149. 
Tittle,  Margaret,  the  poet's 

grandmother,  4. 
Trelawney,  E.  J.,  61. 
Trifler,  The,  16. 

Venice,  28,  38. 
Verdi,  102. 
Villon,  104. 
Virgil,  Dante's,  30. 
Vocabulary,  Browning's,  259. 
Voltaire,  8.*, 

Walpole,  Horace,  8. 
Wiedemann,    William,    the 

poet's  maternal  grandfather,  5. 
Wiseman,  Cardinal,  129. 
Woolner,  149. 
Wordsworth,  9,  33,  92  f.,  241, 

261,  265,  270,  280. 

York  (a  horse),  27. 


THE  END 


u  /«.<, 


6M« 


V 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 
TO—*-     202  Main  Library 


7563 


LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 


1  -month  Joans  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405 

gStP*??  S8  ^"fl*1  **  brinolno  the  books  to  the  Circulation  Desk 
Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4  m,„,  nrinr tntt.„  w..-     a"°n  PeSh 


DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

RECEIVED  BY 

JUL     y  r-»9 

CIRCULATION  DEP1 

FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
1/83  BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


LD  21A-60m-4,'64 
(E4555sl0)476B 


General  Library 

university  of  California 

Berkeley 


«& 

§ 

P 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

* 


GENEMt"B«W-U.C.  BERKELEY 


